OKC Exec plans on building hotels
I found this story from today's JR interesting. For those of you who don't know John Lopez, he operates a HUGE firm here in the city called LOPEZ foods who distribute meat and frozen foods across the nation (one of Wal-Marts biggest suppliers). Oh yeah, and he also supplies most McDonalds in the U.S. with their meat. The guy has bank. I've met him in person on many occasions and is really an asset to OKC and to our Hispanic community. He is very humble too.
Food firm owners leave the kids in charge, plan to build OKC hotel
March 14, 2008
OKLAHOMA CITY – After years of success in the food industry, the owners of Lopez Foods Inc. are stepping into hotel development with one planned for Oklahoma City.John C. Lopez and Pat Lopez have plans for a Cambria Suites hotel, a relatively new brand from Maryland-based Choice Hotels International.
The Lopezes founded Lopez Foods, a meat processing company with plants in Oklahoma, Nebraska and Tennessee, but were looking for a new project. John Lopez said the couple’s three sons are now part of the management team of Lopez Foods.
The ownership name for the hotel is Sueños LLC, which John Lopez said means “dreams” in Spanish. “It was time for me to pass the torch and become a chairman of the company,” he said. “At the same time I did that, and tried to diversify my investment, in the back of my mind I had always dreamed about being a hotel owner.”
At a U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce conference in Milwaukee three years ago, John Lopez met Raul Fuentes, emerging markets director for Choice Hotels. Fuentes said his job with the company is to find, recruit and educate Hispanic entrepreneurs to develop and own hotels. “It’s a business that a lot of Hispanic Latino entrepreneurs haven’t looked at in the past,” Fuentes said.
After a feasibility study of Oklahoma City’s hotel market, Fuentes said the company decided to make a deal with John and Pat Lopez.“We recommended he do his first hotel in his backyard here in Oklahoma City,” Fuentes said. The Cambria brand was launched two years ago, and has hotels in Idaho, Wisconsin, Georgia and Florida.
Choice is the umbrella company for numerous brands such as Comfort Inn, Comfort Suites and Quality Inn. This is the first Oklahoma Cambria hotel. All of the rooms are suites and the company reports the guestrooms are 25 percent larger than standard hotel rooms. Each Cambria also has more than 1,000 square feet of meeting space. John Lopez said Cambria is Choice’s upscale brand.
The hotel, planned for 4410 SW 19th St. just off S. Meridian Avenue, will have 134 rooms and could be open in the next year-and-a-half. Fuentes said the Cambria hotels cost about $12 million to $14 million to develop and build.But this won’t be the only Cambria for the Lopezes. John Lopez said he has signed a five-hotel deal with Choice, and has his sights on other potential markets around the country.
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