Welcome to Rosewood Miramar

After 12 years of frustration and determined perseverance, Los Angeles developer Rick Caruso has opened his $200 million-plus, 161-room, 16-acre Rosewood Miramar Hotel, with its 495 feet of Pacific Ocean frontage.

To mark the occasion he threw a bustling bash, appropriately enough at Caruso’s, one of the tony hostelry’s restaurants, run by Roman chef Massimo Falsini, arriving in his personal $13 million Sikorsky helicopter, which earlier in the evening hovered over the waves so he could get a birds eye view of his stunning new project before landing at an estate by the Santa Barbara Polo Club.

The old Miramar By The Sea Hotel closed in 2000 and rapidly became a festering lot of vermin-plagued decrepit buildings after Beanie Baby billionaire Ty Warner and New York hotelier Ian Schrager, former co-owner of Studio 54, threw in the towel trying to develop the choice site.

Enter billionaire-philanthropist Caruso, who bought the property in 2007 and broke ground in October, 2016, and turned it into one of the Central Coast’s top hotels in 28 months, with 37 suites, a private membership-only beach club, two swimming pools, and a 6,000 sq. ft. ballroom. He also has a penthouse apartment in the complex, much of it an architectural tribute to esteemed southern California architect Paul Williams.

Railroad tracks that run through the property are manned by a crossing guard 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Already there have been a number of weddings on its Great Lawn, one of them with 400 guests.

At the helm is charming Irishman Sean Carney, who has worked in Ireland, St. Lucia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Atlanta, and Hawaii.

Among the guests, tucking into the pasta and caviar appetizers and the Morro Bay oysters, while quaffing the champagne, wine, and creative martinis were Nina Terzian, David Sigman, Allen and Anne Sides, Jeff and Hollye Jacobs, Gina Tolleson, Kendall Conrad, Justin Klentner, Andrew Firestone, Karna Hughes, William and Barbara Tomicki, and Ricardo and Dinah Calderon.