Pacific6 has secured $122.2 million in financing on the eve of turning a century-old Downtown Long Beach landmark into a luxury boutique hotel.
The locally based investor received the refinancing package as it prepares to open the 185-room Fairmont Breakers Long Beach hotel at 210 East Ocean Boulevard, the Commercial Observer reported.
The 14-story hotel is expected to open this spring after a top-to-bottom renovation. It will feature 185 guest rooms, a two-story spa, a rooftop pool and several restaurants, including a jazz club and renovated Sky Room, a popular penthouse restaurant that opened in the late 1930s.
The capital infusion was provided by X-Caliber Funding, a unit of New York-based X-Caliber Capital, and its CastleGreen Finance affiliate.
The financing included $64.5 million in bridge loans, with the rest as Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy financing through a state development authority’s Open PACE Program.
C-PACE financing allows building owners to borrow at low rates to make efficient energy upgrades. It’s not a loan, but a property tax assessment at a fixed rate that pays back the upgrade costs over time.
“Partnering historic tax credits and C-PACE financing is a double win — it breathes new life into aging structures while promoting energy savings and environmental responsibility,” CastleGreen Managing Partner Sal Tarsia said in a statement.
Pacific6, a development consortium co-founded by John Molina, formerly the chief financial officer at Molina Healthcare, bought the building known as Breakers Hotel in 2017 for $40 million.
The community-oriented developer then set on returning it to its former glory as a hotel and spa.
The white tower with the Spanish-style cupula opened in 1926 as a luxury beachfront hotel that catered to “surf bathers.” Its soaring Sky Room catered to such stars as Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Rita Hayworth, Cary Grant and John Wayne.
As the decades wore on, the hotel changed ownerships, bearing the names Hilton, Wilton and the Breakers International Hotel.
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In the mid-1960s it was partially adapted into a retirement community, converted back into a hotel in the early 1980s, closed in 1988 and then converted back into senior housing from 1990 through 2017, according to the Observer.
In 2022, X-Caliber Funding and CastleGreen Finance provided $55 million in financing to Pacific6 to complete an environmental upgrade to its century-old Ocean Center Building at 110 West Ocean Boulevard. The 14-story Spanish Revival building was converted into luxury apartments.
The loan followed an initial $94 million financing package for what was then dubbed Breakers Hotel & Spa.