Setai San Diego, Condo-Hotel Or No Go?

The latest luxury condo-hotel complex in San Diego, the building formerly known as The Diegan has promised to bring a new level of luxury to San Diego. The 23-story downtown condominium-hotel will be home to 185 condo units (that include 24 penthouses). The Diegan, which will now be known as the Setai San Diego (we've covered the Setai in South Beach multiple times) is being developed with the House of Blues. The interior was created by famed hotel designer Dodd Mitchell and feature 10-foot ceilings and interiors that use lots of imported stone, marble, exotic woods and art glass. Units will be furnished with Italian furniture and silk draperies and the bathrooms will have floor-to-ceiling stone walls finished in Jerusalem Bone, teak vanities and limestone floors. Penthouses will have balconies and full Italian kitchens with designer appliances. Amenities will include a business center, restaurant, lobby bar, spa, meeting rooms, a private screening room, a recording studio, a fitness center, a pool deck with a bar and cabanas, and The House of Blues.

The units are being offered from the $400,000s to $3.8 million. But there may be trouble in the soon-to-be-launched paradise, The San Diego Union Tribune has a provocative piece on the developer Steve Rebeil, whose past is full of lawsuits, odd real estate dealings and even a tax-related felony conviction. Apparently in June when he was testifying in a child support dispute with a former girlfriend who is the mother of his 6-year-old son he said that he is not certain that the condo part of the building will work out. He said that he may be returning deposits to those who have bought in to the project. Another partner in his development firm has also said that consultants are advising them to run it as a hotel. That's quite a shift from the beginnings of the condo-hotel boom that we have seen over the past few years. The most recent run on condominium-hotel projects began because hotels couldn't fill their rooms and went condo as a way of making sure they had guaranteed money. Now with the shaky state of real estate, the reversal seems to have begun.