- Debt-Loaded Sheraton Orlando Downtown sold for undisclosed price
- Berlin hosts wave of boutique inns
- Doubletree Coconut Grove reborn as low-frill Courtyard by Marriott in Miami
- Ashford Hospitality Trust closes $145M refinancing deal
- Louisville gets first new downtown hotel since 1984
- Starwood Hotels plans to occupy 250,000 SF at new headquarters in Stamford, CT in January 2012
- New York State pension fund loses $36M on Loew's Lake Plaza
(ORLANDO, FL) -- In Chapter 11 since May 2008, the 24-year-old, 341-room Sheraton Orlando Downtown has been sold for an undisclosed price.
Georgi Zaczac, owner of Orlando-based CF Hospitality Inc., sold the 15-story property to a joint venture comprised of affiliates of Glenmont Capital Management LLC and Resolution Services LLC, both based in New York City.
Zaczac placed Sheraton Orlando North and a sister property in Miami under Bankruptcy Court protection after CF Hospitality owed a total $90 million in loans on both assets, according to court documents.
Besides the mortgage debt, the company also owed creditors about $250,000 for other services.
The Orlando property recently completed a $10 million renovation. The new owners say they plan to invest another $4 million in needed improvements. The hotel opened in June 1985 as the Radisson Plaza Hotel Orlando at 60 S. Ivanhoe Blvd.
(BERLIN, GERMANY) -- Twenty years after the Berlin Wall came down, the city is enjoying a resurgence in new small-sized hotel development.
"Following a long drought, a flood of new hotels is opening in Berlin, energized by the city's reputation as a world capital of the emerging creative class," reports The New York Times.
The 1997 opening of the 400-room Hotel Adlon Kempinski, a popular meeting place for international celebrities before the Second World War, motivated developers to follow a new wave of hotel development. The Kempinski was destroyed by allied bombs in 1945 at the end of WW2.
New hospitality names in Berlin over the last 10 years replaced "the grim hotels with barebones amenities and rude service" of the Nazi-era period, The Times states.
Names like the Casa Camper, a 51-room hotel in the Mitte district of Berlin. The Camper was fully booked when it opened this year on Sept. 15.
Other new lodgings include the 163-room Hotel Amano; the 60-room Circus Hotel; the 42-room Aspria Hotel; and the 119-room Hotel Michelberger.
Hotel Michelberger opened along an industrial corridor of Friedrichshain, next to a U-Bahn and S-Bahn station in eastern Berlin.
"This is the part of Berlin you come to if you want to experience something authentic," hotelier Tom Michelberger tells The Times. "This isn't a place just for tourists. It's where real Berliners live and spend their time. It's very alternative and rock 'n' roll."
(MIAMI, FL) -- Hotel developer Robert Finvarb waited six years for the right location to build his 196-room Courtyard by Marriott in Coconut Grove and last week he opened the lodging just where he had envisioned it - overlooking Biscayne Bay with a view of U.S. 1.
Courtyard by Marriot in Coconut Grove lobby
The Finvarb Group reportedly paid $13 million to a General Electric pension fund for the former Doubletree property. Finvarb is investing another $10 million to bring it up to Courtyard brand standards.
Limited service hotels like Finvarb's Courtyard are attracting previously sidelined investors and hotel owners, according to industry sources.
"They don't get the huge bumps up in room rates, but by the same token, they don't get hit as hard when times are poor," Boaz Ashbel, an investment banker for the Miami-based Aztec Group, told The Herald.
"Pound for pound, they're the most profitable hotels in the business."
(DALLAS, TX) -- Ashford Hospitality Trust Inc. has refinanced its remaining 2010 debt and cushioned its 2011 maturities through two non-recourse loans totaling $145 million.
The lenders are Prudential Mortgage Capital Co. and Wheelock Street Capital. The financing includes an A-Note from Prudential and a B-Note from Wheelock Street. The combined interest rate on the six-year notes is 12.26 percent.
As collateral, Ashford put up the Embassy Suites Crystal City, Embassy Suites Orlando Airport, Embassy Suites Santa Clara, Embassy Suites Portland and the Hilton Costa Mesa.
The $145 million in new funding will pay off a $75 million loan maturing in 2010 and a $65.2 million loan maturing in 2011, according to Ashford CEO Monty Bennett.
"We are pleased to be able to close this financing during this challenging period in the credit markets," says Bennett.
Merrick Kleeman, a managing partner at Wheelock Street, calls the refinancing transactions "an excellent first investment opportunity for our firm and we look forward to working constructively with many other owners to provide capital solutions as they refinance or recapitalize assets."
(LOUISVILLE, KY) -- The planned 48 million 21c Hotel, a boutique inn expected to grace Downtown Louisville in 2012, will be the first new Downtown lodging site since the Hyatt Regency opened on Fifth Street in 1984, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Cincinnati Center Development Corp and 21c, both private entities, are financing the project. Plans call for renovating and converting the low-income Metropole Apartments at 609 Walnut St into a 160-room hotel and 8,000-square-foot contemporary arts venue, the Enquirer states.
"It's really a wonderful addition to our attraction package and complements all the great momentum we've seen in development downtown," says Dan Lincoln, president and CEO the Cincinnati USA Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Lincoln adds, "I specifically use the word 'attraction' because they (museum hotels) are a very unique property in terms of the niche market they're going after."
Plans for boutique hotel come as occupancy rates dropped 7.9 percent from third quarter 2008 to 60.5 percent in third quarter 2009, according to Smith Travel Research Inc. Revenue per available room (RevPAR) slid16.9 percent to $58.61.
(STAMFORD, CT) -- Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. (NYSE: HOT) plans to occupy 250,000 square feet at Stamford's six-million-square-foot waterfront Harbor Point development when the White Plains, NY-based lodging firm relocates its global corporate headquarters in January 2012.
"For months, I have worked with Starwood executives and my economic development to make this deal, and the jobs and investments it brings, a reality for the people of our state," says Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell.
Starwood officials say the company expects to create more than 800 full-time Connecticut-based jobs within two years of relocating.
Frits van Paasschen
He says, "Not only did the State of Connecticut provide meaningful incentives that translate to a savings of 20 percent per year in rent, but we will also have the opportunity to design office space that reflects Starwood's leadership in global hospitality, design and brand-building, as well as our commitment to the environment and our communities."
(ALBANY, NY) -- New York State's pension fund lost $36 million in an investment in the 493-room Lowe's Las Vegas hotel in Henderson, NV, according to the New York Post. The resort went into foreclosure in summer 2008. Half the rooms are empty, the newspaper reports.
New York's $36 million is worth $416,000 today, the Post states. The state's Comptroller's Office made the investment.
"Vegas was hammered by the economy and people weren't traveling as much or hitting the casinos," Robert Whalen, a spokesman for the Comptroller's Office, told the Post.
On a related front, Albany city government's pension-fund real estate holdings lost 24.7 percent in value in the fiscal year that ended June 30. The city's pension fund holdings dropped from $1.2 billion to $885 million, based on records from City Comptroller Bill Thompson, the Post reports.
"The misfortunes of the city and state pension funds pale next to the pounding taken by pension funds in California and Florida, which poured $950 million into the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Vilage apartment complex in Manhattan - and could lose a lot of it," the Post states.
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