Boutique Hotel Remains in Limbo; But Johnny and Larry Have Been Busy
The City of Fullerton’s foray into boutique hostelry remains a big mystery to the public, partly because the public doesn’t know much, if anything about it; but mostly because the City staff doesn’t know what to do with their boondoggle and the people who voted for it – business experts Shana Charles and “Dr.” Ahmad Zahra certainly aren’t talking. Come to think of it, neither are the two councilmembers who voted against it – Fred Jung and Nick Dunlap.
Zahra’s Fullerton Transparency claque and the Fullerton Sisters are silent as the proverbial tomb.
The facts of this disaster hardly require another distasteful regurgitation, so I won’t do it, except to remind Friends that the City deeded over part of the Transportation Center parking facility to TA/Westpark for a pittance, given that they also change the entitlements making it worth 10 times what they sold it for. TA Partners is Johnny Lu and Larry Liu a couple of Chinese con men who had already pleaded guilty to fraud in LA County and who were in the process of going belly up on a huge loan in Irvine.
You may remember that the original grant deed that was recorded by Johnny and Larry was different than the one they recorded later, and the property description in the second recorded deed fraudulently includes the east end of the Depot loading dock now under leasehold by the Bushala Brothers, Inc., whose clock is ticking on their agreement. What a fiasco.
And it may be getting worse. That seems hard to imagine since the property was handed over three and a half years ago and nothing has happened. The hotel and attached mega apartment is supposed to be complete by October 21, 2026. My recollection is that the hotel and the attached mega apartment was supposed to be done only a few months from now. How many legally required milestones have been missed remains a part of the Big Sleep.
Meanwhile Johnny and Larry are said to have taken out a loan against their Fullerton real estate. I guess someone was willing to bet on the come, or just as likely, wasn’t – ahem – fully informed. Which deed was used to describe the lender’s collateral? Must have been the most recent one that includes the loading dock.
If some new loan fraud took place we can add that to the legal entanglements between TA Partners and the family of the original brainstormer, Craig Hostert, now unfortunately deceased. The agreement with the City should have excluded TA from creating debt on the property with permission from the City. But Fullerton, being Fullerton.
This comical boondoggle is now well over 7 years old and still there are no signs of official communication about the state of this mess, let alone resolution. Is staff trying to find a replacement to keep the embarrassment alive and save face for the disaster? Who knows?
The idiot Charles said the boutique hotel would be used by people visiting the Community Center. And that there was a potential link up to Fullerton’s urban forest.
Honest to God. You couldn’t make that shit up.
Johnny and Larry took out a loan on that lot?
Johnny and Larry are what Fullerton considers economic developers.
Doug Chaffee managed to slide this idea under the wire as he was departing Fullerton’s city council eight years ago to become the new 4th district OC Supervisor. He is nearly finished with his second term in that body and NOTHING has resulted from this clusterfuck other than wasted time and effort. Fullerton should sue for fraud and get the land back.
He did it to make Jennifer Fitzcrimewave happy so Pringle would give him a fundraiser.
Johnny and Larry have the deed and are apparently borrowing against it. Oh, it’s a clusterfuck alright.
And all brought to you by the dim-witted Whitaker whose only accomplishment in 14 years was that mess.
Why did Dougie need a fundraiser from anyone? He has lawyer money.
I knew Craig Hostert.
He was in poor health for years up until his death. And he was being manipulated by people who exploited him on the days he was too weak to get out of bed or think clearly.
Craig was a smart guy with a finance background who acted rationally when his health allowed him to.
First sign of trouble was when somebody convinced him the hotel would be full of Amtrak riders travelling to and from Disneyland. I told him that was complete nonsense and would never happen. Disneyland gets 25 million visitors while Amtrak has 200,000 riders. Studies have shown the average Amtrak rider lives within 30 minutes and rides the train to San Diego, LA or Santa Barbara. Almost nobody rides Amtrak to Fullerton for the purpose of a Disneyland trip.
“If you build it, they will come”
That was the mindset. I asked what would happen if people did come. How would they get to and from Disneyland with no car? They sure as hell aren’t going to ride OCTA there. Craig thought they could run shuttle busses. I don’t think that’s rational at all.
Craig and his wife knew Bruce and Linda from the annual organ donation fundraisers and events which the Hosterts organized every year. That’s how they secured Bruce’s vote.
Thanks for the insights.
Unless I’m wrong, the much vaunted High Speed Rail will pass right through Fullerton to stop in Anaheim. We get all the inconvenience of HSR and none of the benefits, like tourists spending money. For all of its charms, Fullerton is hardly a destination city.
And now the boutique hotel is partially morphed into not-so-affordable housing, which could actually work if it had been thought through carefully and the council hadn’t given away the store to get it built.
File it under the latest in a long list of wishful thinking plans and hope the rights expire before anything awful is built.
“File it under the latest in a long list of wishful thinking plans and hope the rights expire before anything awful is built.”
But what are the “rights” and how do they expire? Johnny and Larry blew past every deadline and no one has said anything. They are in default, but how is that default remedied? They have the damn deed.
There are lots of culprits and the least are Charles and Zahra who are idiots. How could Eric Leavitt and Dick Jones let this happen?
Fine. Let them pay taxes and the cost for keeping up vacant land (until they sell it for a profit to someone else).
#1 Who says they’re paying taxes? There’s nothing to “keep up.” It’s a parking lot with City electricity.
#2 They can’t sell it because of the encumbrances (including their new own loan).
#3 They can’t sell it without removing the encumbrances.
#4 They will be in jail.
#5 You are an idiot.
#4? Maybe.
#5 Perhaps I am an idiot, but I certainly wouldn’t have been stupid enough to approve an idiotic deal like this one.
Shut up, Elijah. It’s past your bedtime.
“If you build it, they will come”
The motto of the Trail to Nowhere. And guess what? Nobody is coming. I almost never see anybody on it. And why would anybody use it. It goes from a corner of Independence Park and dies at Highland. The end.
I don’t doubt that you’re right about Whitaker’s friendship, but I suspect it was his wifey who was really pushing the hotel fiasco. I could be wrong about that, but any way you slice it it was a horrible dereliction. And he used the lame pretext that something had to be done before the new surplus property law came into effect – which was complete nonsense.
Bruce is a lazy ideologue – a bad combination. Once he got a convenient and comforting idea in his that was it.
I just drove on Santa Fe in front of the lot where the “Boutique Hotel” is supposed to go.
I haven’t seen such a collection of hobos, drug addicts, homeless and mentally compromised people since I was near LA skid row. Ain’t no decent hotel ever gonna invest in that dumping ground.
It was never going to happen. It was just an incubus that visited Mayor-for-sale Jennifer Fitzgerald one night after too many schnapps shots with Jan Flory.
How would the City have a pathway to get the land back? And now there’s a lienholder?
Big bucks for Jones and Mayer.
That’s what I’d like to know. Doesn’t city have any leverage if nothing is built within a proscribed period of time?
Yeah. It’s called lengthy and expensive litigation. And now it sounds like somebody else has an encumbrance on the parking lot.
The suckers that lent the money to Johnny and Larry are probably in on the fraud. Nobody with $2,000,000 would be so stupid as to fall for the old “use a different legal description” trick and on top of it not obtain title insurance.
And what about the Florentine/Marovic sidewalk heist? Wasn’t that supposed to have been resolved? Maybe it was – spineless capitulation.