Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Claremont Resort and Club sits at the foot of Claremont Canyon in the Berkeley Hills, near the intersection of Claremont Avenue and Ashby Avenue. The property straddles the city limits of Berkeley and Oakland, with the hotel building itself located in Oakland. The resort's mailing address is 41 Tunnel Road, Berkeley, California 94705.
Construction on the Claremont Hotel began after the property was purchased in 1905, but was interrupted by the 1906 earthquake. The hotel was completed in 1914 and opened in 1915, timed to serve visitors attending the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.
A California law enacted in 1873 banned alcohol sales within two miles of the University of California; this was later reduced to one mile in 1876. The Claremont fell within that zone. The hotel's investors tried and failed to pass legislation in 1913 to exempt the property. Legal alcohol service only became possible in 1937, when the law was changed to measure the one-mile distance along street routes rather than in a straight line.
The Claremont Hotel Company, led by Louis Titus and including investors such as Francis "Borax" Smith, Frank C. Havens, John Hopkins Spring, and Duncan McDuffie, purchased the site in 1905 for approximately $37,500. Several of the investors were already involved in the Key System, a transit and real estate venture in the East Bay. Erik Lindblom provided the financing that finally completed the building in 1914.
Ohana Real Estate Investors purchased the Claremont Hotel in May 2023 for $163 million. The previous sale, to the Fairmont Hotel chain and financier Richard Blum, had taken place in March 2014 for $86 million.
The Claremont is a designated Oakland City Historical Landmark and has been a member of Historic Hotels of America, an official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, since 2016. It was nominated for the National Register of Historic Places in 2003 and deemed eligible, but owner objection prevented the listing.