Challenge
McWhinney, a real estate firm focusing on large-scale, single- and multi-use developments, began working on a project in Southern California in October of 2007. McWhinney partnered with Great Wolf Resorts and the City of Garden Grove to develop a family water-park resort hotel and conference center. However, the development’s progress was long-delayed due to financing and bureaucratic approval challenges. Should the resort be approved, it would become the single-largest project, in terms of total cost, that McWhinney had ever developed. McWhinney engaged dovetail solutions to assist with the closing of this significant deal.
Strategy
McWhinney asked for dovetail solutions’ assistance in pushing this undertaking through the approval process, which had been held indefinitely within the state’s bureaucratic system for the past six years. Through dovetail solutions’ relationship with the lieutenant governor of California, dovetail solutions was able to enlist the official’s help in moving this project forward toward a favorable result. Within a matter of days, McWhinney received its official letter of approval from the Department of Finance, a piece of the closing process that was of immense importance.
Results
By leveraging dovetail solutions’ relationship with key officials, McWhinney was able to move forward with the project’s closing process. With the firm receiving official approval on the Great Wolf Project, it is well on its way toward developing the $285 million resort. Upon completion, the Great Wolf Project will feature approximately 600 hotel rooms, a 110,000-square-foot indoor waterpark, a 30,000-square-foot outdoor waterpark and a 1,000-space parking structure. The project will also bring significant impact to the local economy in Southern California, creating approximately 700 construction jobs, 600 full- and part-time hotel staffing positions and about $9 million per year in tax revenues to the City of Garden Grove.