Renaissance Ilikai Hotel
to get $25 million face lift

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By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

The owners of the Renaissance Ilikai Hotel Waikiki plan to spend about $25 million renovating the 36-year-old hotel. The new look will include replacing the granite fountain at the entrance on Ala Moana Boulevard with a "grand staircase" like the one that used to welcome guests in the hotel's youth.

The restoration, developed by the Hawaii architecture firm Wimberly, Allison, Tong & Goo, will involve changes to the common areas, meeting spaces, nearly 600 of the 783 guest rooms and the restaurants, General Manager Alan Cambra said in a statement issued yesterday.

One of the design changes in the project requires removal of retail spaces in the lobby area to open up views of the ocean. The renovations are scheduled for completion in December, hotel officials said.

Developed by Honolulu financier Chinn Ho and opened in 1964 as a mixture of luxury condominium and hotel units, the hotel was later sold to Japanese investors, and since February 2000 has been owned by a California partnership controlled by Taiwan's Zen family, owners of hotels in California and Washington.

It is managed by Pittsburgh-based Interstate Hotels Corp., which runs 165 hotels in the United States, Canada, the Caribbean and Russia. The Renaissance name comes from a franchise agreement that has the hotel marketed and listed under the Renaissance brand, owned by Marriott International Inc., giving it a worldwide market presence.