New developments will increase WeHo’s hotel inventory by 36%

West Hollywood hotel development Sunset La Cienega James Hotel
Renderings of Sunset La Cienega, which will house the James Hotel in WeHo

West Hollywood is seeing a surge of hotel development that will increase its inventory by a whopping 36 percent. 

On Sunset Boulevard alone, more than 758 hotel rooms are under construction, according to the Los Angeles Business Journal.

The new projects include CIM Group’s $365 million Sunset La Cienega project, which will be home to the 296-room James Hotel, a boutique concept operated by New York’s Denihan Hospitality Group. Howard Lorber’s New Valley and developer Steve Witkoff are also building in the area, after securing a $260 million loan for the construction of the first Edition hotel on the West Coast. They are developing the 190-room project in partnership with Marriott International and hotelier Ian Schrager.

Several luxury projects will replace hallmarks of the Sunset Strip’s musical past. A 149-room hotel called Sunset Time will be built on the site of the House of Blues, which will be demolished.

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The developers of the new hotels, many of whom saw their projects stall out during the downturn and are now back in the swing of things, have reason to believe their developments will succeed. WeHo’s average hotel occupancy rate was roughly 83 percent in the first half of 2015, and, according to the Business Journal, 70 percent occupancy is considered high.

Hotels in the tourist-friendly city also get high rates. They averaged $279 a night in the first half of 2015, a 9.7 percent increase from the same period a year earlier.

WeHo is not the only submarket seeing a lot of hotel action. There are 84 hotel projects totaling 14,650 new rooms in development in Los Angeles County, Ernest Wooden, CEO of the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board, told the Business Journal. [LABJ] – Hannah Miet