Chula Vista and the Port of San Diego borrowed approximately $383 million to subsidize the sprawling 36-acre resort and convention center, issuing bonds that must ultimately be repaid with interest. When officials approved the development agreement in 2018, they projected the total cost of repaying that debt at roughly $870 million, but that already enormous figure is now expected to climb.
The changing financial picture was revealed Wednesday in an investigation by Voice of San Diego reporter Jim Hinch, who examined city and Port budget documents, the original economic projections used to support the project and the public agencies' plans to refinance the debt. His reporting found not only that officials now expect the bonds to cost more to repay than originally projected, but that a financial milestone once forecast for the resort's second year of operation may not arrive until somewhere between its 15th and 19th years.
"The total cost of the debt will be higher than what was estimated in 2018," Chula Vista Deputy City Manager Sarah Schoen told Voice of San Diego.
Exactly how much higher remains unknown. Chula Vista and the Port are preparing to refinance the debt, and interest rates, tourism trends and the credit rating assigned to the new bonds could dramatically affect how much the public ultimately pays.
Perhaps even more striking is how dramatically the expected timeline for taxpayers to begin coming out ahead has changed. When Chula Vista and the Port issued the bonds in 2022, an independent economic analysis predicted that by Gaylord Pacific's second year of operation, tax revenue attributable to the development would exceed the amount necessary to service its bond debt. Gaylord Pacific is now in that second year, and that isn't happening.
Current city and Port budget documents project approximately $25 million in taxes this fiscal year from Gaylord Pacific and two neighboring properties whose revenues are included in the financing structure, while roughly $29 million will be required for bond debt. Once all revenues and expenses associated with the financing are considered, officials expect to come up approximately $3 million short of what's needed for this year's payment and will draw from money previously set aside in reserves to cover the difference.
Using reserves during Gaylord's early years does not mean Chula Vista is defaulting on its bonds, nor was the possibility of an initial ramp-up period unforeseen. The financing structure included money specifically reserved to help cover early obligations, and officials continue to express confidence that revenues will eventually exceed the debt payments. What's changed rather dramatically is when they expect that to happen.
Instead of the year-two surplus contemplated by the earlier economic analysis, Port spokesperson Brianne Mundy Page told Voice of San Diego that officials now project the development will begin generating more cash than its bond payments and reimbursements to public agencies sometime during years 15 through 19 of hotel operations. That means a financial milestone once expected essentially now could instead take another decade and a half to materialize.
The development at the center of that public wager is enormous. Gaylord Pacific opened in May 2025 with 1,600 hotel rooms, multiple restaurants and bars, an approximately 4.25-acre water park and roughly 477,000 square feet of meeting, ballroom and convention space overlooking San Diego Bay. It is operated by Marriott International under its Gaylord Hotels brand and was developed by Houston-based RIDA Development with institutional investment backing.
These aren't small private operators requiring public assistance to open a neighborhood hotel. Marriott International is one of the largest hospitality companies in the world, while RIDA describes itself as the country's largest private developer and owner of multi-branded conference resorts and has touted a portfolio of projects valued in the billions.
Yet Chula Vista's own economic analysis concluded that the Gaylord project would not have produced a sufficient return for its private developer without the public investment. The city's 2021 subsidy report estimated approximately $907 million in private investment and calculated that the project could generate a roughly 9.95 percent return for the developer by its eighth lease year with the public contribution included.
"But for the Economic Development Investment," the city-commissioned report concluded, "the RHCC Project would not generate sufficient ROI to the Developer and would therefore be financially infeasible."
In other words, the public subsidy wasn't some peripheral incentive attached to a private development that was happening anyway. According to the city's own analysis, the government contribution was necessary to make the project financially attractive enough for the developer to build.
That public commitment extends far beyond the $383 million principal borrowed through the bond financing. The original projections contemplated hundreds of millions of dollars in interest and financing expenses over the life of the debt, which is how $383 million borrowed could ultimately translate into approximately $870 million in repayment costs.
Now even that enormous number is expected to increase. The ultimate figure will depend substantially on what happens when the bonds are refinanced. Chula Vista and Port officials have hired two firms to prepare an updated economic feasibility analysis, while Schoen says officials are considering six different refinancing scenarios and don't yet have enough information to confidently calculate the eventual cost.
Interest rates remain a major uncertainty. Schoen noted that rates are elevated, inflation and broader economic conditions remain unpredictable and Chula Vista hotel operators have reported weakening cross-border tourism, all of which complicates forecasts for both borrowing costs and future hotel-generated revenues.
"Most likely, the debt service payment won't go down a ton," Schoen told Voice of San Diego.
Port Real Estate Director Adam Meyer is considerably more optimistic. He argues that refinancing could actually produce a better interest rate because Gaylord Pacific is now a completed, operating resort generating revenue rather than an enormous construction project whose success remained hypothetical.
"When a project is not built, it's risky," Meyer told Voice of San Diego. "Now it's less risky. [We're] likely to have better interest rates than last time."
Meyer also said his own "napkin calculation" suggests Gaylord's current economic performance is approximately 25 percent better than what officials predicted when the bonds were issued in 2022. Other officials have been even more enthusiastic about the resort's performance, with Chula Vista Port Commissioner Ann Moore telling South County business leaders earlier this year that Gaylord Pacific was already the third-highest-grossing Marriott property in the world.
Those claims create an intriguing contradiction at the center of the financing story. Gaylord Pacific can simultaneously be an extraordinarily successful hotel and a public investment that takes much longer than originally projected to produce surplus revenue, because the profitability of a privately operated resort and the financial return flowing back to the governments that subsidized it are two very different things.
The resort itself does not publicly disclose its proprietary financial information to Chula Vista, according to Schoen, meaning city officials don't have complete access to the hotel's underlying books. Bond-rating agencies evaluating the refinancing will receive substantially more detailed financial information, and their assessment of the project's risk will ultimately help determine the interest rate taxpayers face.
Meanwhile, the city and Port remain responsible for a financing structure dependent on hotel-room taxes, sales taxes, property-related revenue, special Bayfront taxes and other public revenues generated within the development area. The theory has always been that Gaylord would create enough new economic activity to cover those obligations and eventually produce substantial additional revenue for both agencies.
It still might.
Chula Vista Mayor John McCann declared at Gaylord Pacific's grand opening that the resort would transform the waterfront into a "world-class people's bayfront" while generating approximately $475 million in annual economic impact. Supporters have pointed to conventions already booked at the property, visitors spilling into nearby businesses and the enormous development activity Gaylord was intended to catalyze along a waterfront that city leaders spent decades trying to transform.
But the benefits aren't necessarily spreading evenly through Chula Vista. Councilmember Cesar Fernandez, whose district includes Gaylord Pacific, told Voice of San Diego that some restaurants near the resort are seeing business from convention visitors, while those visitors apparently aren't making it several miles inland to the city's traditional Third Avenue commercial district.
"I don't think conventioneers get that far," Fernandez said.
Fernandez also acknowledged something unusual about the relationship between the people subsidizing Gaylord and the people most likely to actually stay there. With rooms beginning around $400 per night and sometimes exceeding $1,000, the resort isn't exactly positioned as a weekend getaway for the average South Bay family.
"The hotel is not made for Chula Vista residents," Fernandez told Voice of San Diego. "That's not a great thing for Chula Vistans to hear. But it's the truth of the matter."
None of that proves Gaylord Pacific will ultimately be a bad investment for Chula Vista. Large convention resorts are inherently long-term projects, the hotel has barely completed its first year of operations, its waterfront surroundings remain under development, and officials have decades remaining for the project to generate the economic activity they envisioned.
It also doesn't mean taxpayers are suddenly being asked to write a $3 million check because Gaylord couldn't pay its bills. Money was reserved within the financing structure for precisely this purpose, and the agencies currently have sufficient funds to make the scheduled debt payment.
But those qualifications don't erase what has changed since officials made their original projections. Chula Vista and the Port borrowed $383 million to help finance a project developed and operated by some extraordinarily well-capitalized private companies, expected approximately $870 million in eventual repayment costs, and relied upon an economic analysis predicting that excess revenues would begin flowing back to the public agencies in the resort's second year.
The second year has arrived with a projected shortfall instead. Officials now acknowledge the total debt repayment will exceed the original estimate, don't yet know by how much, and say the point at which the financing begins producing positive cash flow could arrive somewhere between years 15 and 19.
Gaylord Pacific itself may be booming. Marriott may be operating one of the most impressive convention resorts on the West Coast, and Chula Vista may eventually look back on the development as the catalyst that transformed its waterfront and produced decades of economic growth.
But the public side of the bargain was sold with numbers too, and those numbers are changing remarkably early in the life of the deal. What was once projected as an approximately $870 million taxpayer-backed obligation is getting more expensive, while a surplus once projected for year two could be pushed more than a decade into the future.
For a $1.3 billion resort that public officials repeatedly promised would help transform Chula Vista's economic future, the most consequential number may ultimately be one nobody can provide yet: how much taxpayers will actually have paid by the time the bill is finally settled.
This article is based in significant part on reporting by Jim Hinch of Voice of San Diego, supplemented by public financial documents and information concerning the Gaylord Pacific development.
Originally published September 2, 2026.
Perhaps even more striking is how dramatically the expected timeline for taxpayers to begin coming out ahead has changed. When Chula Vista and the Port issued the bonds in 2022, an independent economic analysis predicted that by Gaylord Pacific's second year of operation, tax revenue attributable to the development would exceed the amount necessary to service its bond debt. Gaylord Pacific is now in that second year, and that isn't happening.
Current city and Port budget documents project approximately $25 million in taxes this fiscal year from Gaylord Pacific and two neighboring properties whose revenues are included in the financing structure, while roughly $29 million will be required for bond debt. Once all revenues and expenses associated with the financing are considered, officials expect to come up approximately $3 million short of what's needed for this year's payment and will draw from money previously set aside in reserves to cover the difference.
Using reserves during Gaylord's early years does not mean Chula Vista is defaulting on its bonds, nor was the possibility of an initial ramp-up period unforeseen. The financing structure included money specifically reserved to help cover early obligations, and officials continue to express confidence that revenues will eventually exceed the debt payments. What's changed rather dramatically is when they expect that to happen.
Instead of the year-two surplus contemplated by the earlier economic analysis, Port spokesperson Brianne Mundy Page told Voice of San Diego that officials now project the development will begin generating more cash than its bond payments and reimbursements to public agencies sometime during years 15 through 19 of hotel operations. That means a financial milestone once expected essentially now could instead take another decade and a half to materialize.
The development at the center of that public wager is enormous. Gaylord Pacific opened in May 2025 with 1,600 hotel rooms, multiple restaurants and bars, an approximately 4.25-acre water park and roughly 477,000 square feet of meeting, ballroom and convention space overlooking San Diego Bay. It is operated by Marriott International under its Gaylord Hotels brand and was developed by Houston-based RIDA Development with institutional investment backing.
These aren't small private operators requiring public assistance to open a neighborhood hotel. Marriott International is one of the largest hospitality companies in the world, while RIDA describes itself as the country's largest private developer and owner of multi-branded conference resorts and has touted a portfolio of projects valued in the billions.
Yet Chula Vista's own economic analysis concluded that the Gaylord project would not have produced a sufficient return for its private developer without the public investment. The city's 2021 subsidy report estimated approximately $907 million in private investment and calculated that the project could generate a roughly 9.95 percent return for the developer by its eighth lease year with the public contribution included.
"But for the Economic Development Investment," the city-commissioned report concluded, "the RHCC Project would not generate sufficient ROI to the Developer and would therefore be financially infeasible."
In other words, the public subsidy wasn't some peripheral incentive attached to a private development that was happening anyway. According to the city's own analysis, the government contribution was necessary to make the project financially attractive enough for the developer to build.
That public commitment extends far beyond the $383 million principal borrowed through the bond financing. The original projections contemplated hundreds of millions of dollars in interest and financing expenses over the life of the debt, which is how $383 million borrowed could ultimately translate into approximately $870 million in repayment costs.
Now even that enormous number is expected to increase. The ultimate figure will depend substantially on what happens when the bonds are refinanced. Chula Vista and Port officials have hired two firms to prepare an updated economic feasibility analysis, while Schoen says officials are considering six different refinancing scenarios and don't yet have enough information to confidently calculate the eventual cost.
Interest rates remain a major uncertainty. Schoen noted that rates are elevated, inflation and broader economic conditions remain unpredictable and Chula Vista hotel operators have reported weakening cross-border tourism, all of which complicates forecasts for both borrowing costs and future hotel-generated revenues.
"Most likely, the debt service payment won't go down a ton," Schoen told Voice of San Diego.
Port Real Estate Director Adam Meyer is considerably more optimistic. He argues that refinancing could actually produce a better interest rate because Gaylord Pacific is now a completed, operating resort generating revenue rather than an enormous construction project whose success remained hypothetical.
"When a project is not built, it's risky," Meyer told Voice of San Diego. "Now it's less risky. [We're] likely to have better interest rates than last time."
Meyer also said his own "napkin calculation" suggests Gaylord's current economic performance is approximately 25 percent better than what officials predicted when the bonds were issued in 2022. Other officials have been even more enthusiastic about the resort's performance, with Chula Vista Port Commissioner Ann Moore telling South County business leaders earlier this year that Gaylord Pacific was already the third-highest-grossing Marriott property in the world.
Those claims create an intriguing contradiction at the center of the financing story. Gaylord Pacific can simultaneously be an extraordinarily successful hotel and a public investment that takes much longer than originally projected to produce surplus revenue, because the profitability of a privately operated resort and the financial return flowing back to the governments that subsidized it are two very different things.
The resort itself does not publicly disclose its proprietary financial information to Chula Vista, according to Schoen, meaning city officials don't have complete access to the hotel's underlying books. Bond-rating agencies evaluating the refinancing will receive substantially more detailed financial information, and their assessment of the project's risk will ultimately help determine the interest rate taxpayers face.
Meanwhile, the city and Port remain responsible for a financing structure dependent on hotel-room taxes, sales taxes, property-related revenue, special Bayfront taxes and other public revenues generated within the development area. The theory has always been that Gaylord would create enough new economic activity to cover those obligations and eventually produce substantial additional revenue for both agencies.
It still might.
Chula Vista Mayor John McCann declared at Gaylord Pacific's grand opening that the resort would transform the waterfront into a "world-class people's bayfront" while generating approximately $475 million in annual economic impact. Supporters have pointed to conventions already booked at the property, visitors spilling into nearby businesses and the enormous development activity Gaylord was intended to catalyze along a waterfront that city leaders spent decades trying to transform.
But the benefits aren't necessarily spreading evenly through Chula Vista. Councilmember Cesar Fernandez, whose district includes Gaylord Pacific, told Voice of San Diego that some restaurants near the resort are seeing business from convention visitors, while those visitors apparently aren't making it several miles inland to the city's traditional Third Avenue commercial district.
"I don't think conventioneers get that far," Fernandez said.
Fernandez also acknowledged something unusual about the relationship between the people subsidizing Gaylord and the people most likely to actually stay there. With rooms beginning around $400 per night and sometimes exceeding $1,000, the resort isn't exactly positioned as a weekend getaway for the average South Bay family.
"The hotel is not made for Chula Vista residents," Fernandez told Voice of San Diego. "That's not a great thing for Chula Vistans to hear. But it's the truth of the matter."
None of that proves Gaylord Pacific will ultimately be a bad investment for Chula Vista. Large convention resorts are inherently long-term projects, the hotel has barely completed its first year of operations, its waterfront surroundings remain under development, and officials have decades remaining for the project to generate the economic activity they envisioned.
It also doesn't mean taxpayers are suddenly being asked to write a $3 million check because Gaylord couldn't pay its bills. Money was reserved within the financing structure for precisely this purpose, and the agencies currently have sufficient funds to make the scheduled debt payment.
But those qualifications don't erase what has changed since officials made their original projections. Chula Vista and the Port borrowed $383 million to help finance a project developed and operated by some extraordinarily well-capitalized private companies, expected approximately $870 million in eventual repayment costs, and relied upon an economic analysis predicting that excess revenues would begin flowing back to the public agencies in the resort's second year.
The second year has arrived with a projected shortfall instead. Officials now acknowledge the total debt repayment will exceed the original estimate, don't yet know by how much, and say the point at which the financing begins producing positive cash flow could arrive somewhere between years 15 and 19.
Gaylord Pacific itself may be booming. Marriott may be operating one of the most impressive convention resorts on the West Coast, and Chula Vista may eventually look back on the development as the catalyst that transformed its waterfront and produced decades of economic growth.
But the public side of the bargain was sold with numbers too, and those numbers are changing remarkably early in the life of the deal. What was once projected as an approximately $870 million taxpayer-backed obligation is getting more expensive, while a surplus once projected for year two could be pushed more than a decade into the future.
For a $1.3 billion resort that public officials repeatedly promised would help transform Chula Vista's economic future, the most consequential number may ultimately be one nobody can provide yet: how much taxpayers will actually have paid by the time the bill is finally settled.
This article is based in significant part on reporting by Jim Hinch of Voice of San Diego, supplemented by public financial documents and information concerning the Gaylord Pacific development.
Originally published September 2, 2026.
