San Diego

The Inter-Continental Hotel has closed two of its waterfront restaurants, including its elegant French eatery, Maison Ann Marie, and a cocktail lounge because it can’t support them until a second tower and adjacent convention center are built.

Barbara Lange, spokeswoman for the hotel, said the restaurants will be used for catered events such as weddings, large parties and community functions. The hotel has been turning away catering business, she said, while the demand for the restaurants has been only “adequate.”

The closures, Lange emphasized, are temporary, and reopening is expected when the second tower is finished, sometime in late 1987.

“The restaurants were built with the idea they would support two towers,” Lange said, noting that other facilities such as the hotel’s large swimming pool and lobby were also constructed with twin towers in mind.

Maison Ann Marie and Lael’s, a seafood restaurant, are in the hotel’s Bayside Pavilion, which offers panoramic views of a marina, San Diego Bay and the Coronado Bridge. The restaurants together can seat about 200. Also closed is the pavilion’s Corniche Lounge.

Still open, however, are two other hotel restaurants--Molly’s Pub and Grill, and Las Cascadas, as well as the Lobby Lounge. All three are inside the hotel tower.

Hotel officials say the 681-room hotel has had a healthy occupancy rate but that that alone isn’t enough to support four restaurants and two lounges. To be profitable, the restaurants need customers from the $125-million convention center now under construction and the proposed 683-room twin tower.

Lange said that most of the 55 employees of the closed restaurants and lounge had been reassigned to other hotel jobs.