San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) March 08, 2012

America’s Cup fans will be able to opt for luxury “homes away from home” while they attend the Cup events in San Francisco in the summers of 2012 and 2013. Even if most of the prime hotel rooms were not already committed, many corporate and private visitors would choose to rent homes for the comfort and spaciousness, according to Charlie Martin, managing director of San Francisco-based luxury home rental firm RezLux.

San Francisco has only 33,000 hotel rooms of varying qualities. Official projections anticipate daily visitors during the America’s Cup events at more than five times that number, which explains why most of the desirable hotel rooms are already booked.

The 34th America’s Cup competition in San Francisco will span three to four weeks in August and September of 2012 and nearly three months in 2013. Those are long times to spend in hotel rooms, even in luxury suites.

What are America’s Cup fans to do? Martin says they need to look to “homes away from home”. Such properties frequently combine the livability of a home with views of the sailing race course, proximity to America’s Cup social events and access to a concierge to arrange those last minute tickets, tours and chef-prepared meals.

“The America’s Cup competition is not an intense, one-day event but rather a multi-day experience to be savored and enjoyed,” said Martin, “The catamaran races on the Bay will be very exciting to see but the extended schedule affords visitors the opportunity to enjoy all that San Francisco and the Bay Area have to offer.”

In 2011, Martin set about to determine whether owners of luxury homes in the San Francisco Bay Area would have interest in renting their houses during the America’s Cup events. The response was quite strong and so Martin and two other professionals created RezLux. As world travelers and owners of luxury homes themselves, the three principals can anticipate the needs of the homeowners and the visitors alike.

“We know our homeowners want us to screen the possible tenants to avoid complications,” Martin explained. “Our tenants want all the quality and luxury of a five-star hotel with a concierge service at hand to fulfill any request.” Martin, a 30-year veteran of Bay Area residential real estate, personally reviews the home of each person seeking to list with RezLux and some have not met the selection criteria. Similarly a RezLux professional or, in some cases, a “secret shopper”, checks each and every third party service before the service would be added to the RezLux Suggested Service List.

“We at RezLux want our clients to enjoy the America’s Cup experience and all the glorious San Francisco Bay Area has to offer,” said Martin, “And we are working hard to ensure their stays go without hitches.”

RezLux LLC is a firm specializing in the rental of luxury homes for specific events in the San Francisco Bay Area, particularly for the 34th America’s Cup competition. RezLux has assembled a portfolio of some of the finest homes in the Bay Area available for rent. For more information, see RezLux.com or call 415-689-6739.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2012/3/prweb9259848.htm

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/03/08/prweb9259848.DTL

In December 2010, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a deal to host the America’s Cup sailing race, which is being staged by Oracle Racing and sponsored by San Francisco’s Golden Gate Yacht Club. The arm of the race that puts on the event was to receive long-term development rights to waterfront property in San Francisco, in return for fronting the millions of dollars needed to fix several dilapidated piers.

Yet days after the board signed the agreement, Newport, R.I., suddenly emerged as a finalist to host the race, and America’s Cup officials seemed open to holding the event there instead of San Francisco. In a move to hang on to the race, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom unilaterally changed portions of the hosting agreement, making the deal a worse one for The City than the one approved by the board.

Nonetheless, for the next year or so, planning of the event seemed to sail along, with committees and subcommittees hearing the plans and mostly rubber-stamping the approvals in a deal that wasn’t heavily scrutinized by the public or media.

But lying just below the surface were voices of criticism, and rightly so. While the deal would have fixed portions of the waterfront that are badly in need of repair, the long-term costs to The City and its taxpayers did not make sense. So when Mayor Ed Lee announced Monday that two piers were being taken off the table, and the investment in waterfront rehab was scaled back from $111 million to a price tag of between $10 million to $18 million, everyone in San Francisco should have breathed a sigh of relief.

Developing prime waterfront real estate in San Francisco should not be taken lightly, nor proceed without proper public vetting. The City’s bayshore waterfront is some of the best real estate in the entire nation, and it does need to be redeveloped — possibly in a public-private deal like the one the America’s Cup Event Authority proposed. But doing so under the duress of losing a world-class event led the prior administration to agree to a shortsighted deal.

The America’s Cup is a boon for San Francisco, and city officials should do whatever is within their means to make it successful. The long-term status of San Francisco’s waterfront, however, need not be resolved so breezily.

Article source: http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/2012/03/americas-cup-downsized-pier-pact-gives-sf-better-deal