InterContinental San Diego
31 Years Later, InterContinental Returns to San Diego’s Skyline
There was a time a few decades ago when the global hospitality brand, InterContinental, was a prominent fixture on San Diego's waterfront, a forerunner to upscale lodging on the bay. Yet as quickly as the hotel chain arrived, it was gone within three years, replaced by the Marriott moniker.
Photo by IHG
Now, 31 years later, InterContinental has returned to the bayfront, albeit in a different location, assuming its place in a much more crowded downtown skyline.
At 18 stories high, the new 400-room InterContinental San Diego opened late last month for business and will celebrate a formal grand opening Thursday with local dignitaries, including Mayor Kevin Faulconer.
The $217 million project represents the final phase of a long-planned complex of two hotels that occupy the site of the former Lane Field baseball stadium, the long-ago home of the Pacific Coast League Padres.
The first phase, which opened in 2016, was the 400-room, dual-branded Marriott SpringHill Suites-Residence Inn hotel. Together, with the InterContinental, they make up what is known as BRIC -- a play on its location at the intersection of Broadway and Pacific Highway.
At the time the InterContinental made its debut in San Diego in 1984, it was touted as the first major high-rise hotel since the Westgate had opened 20 years earlier. Contrast that to today, when San Diego is experiencing something of a building boom, with 3,000 hotel rooms under construction through the first six months of this year and 17,000 more in various stages of planning.
Source: Lori Weisberg | The San Diego Union-Tribune