Rockpoint closes two hotel deals for $375m

Rockpoint Group has completed the sale of its interests in two hotel properties within the last month, generating a total of $375 million in revenues for itself and its partners. 

The Boston-based real estate investment manager announced today that it closed on the sale of the 1,053-room Boston Park Plaza Hotel & Towers for $250 million last week. The buyer, Sunstone Hotel Investors, previously had disclosed in its first-quarter earnings results in May that it had agreed to acquire the hotel in a deal structured as a tax-deferred exchange. At the time, the publicly-traded lodging REIT said it would fund the transaction with a combination of the proceeds received from the sale of a commercial property portfolio in January, cash on hand and the assumption of a non-recourse loan secured by the hotel.

Rockpoint had purchased the Park Plaza hotel for $125 million in June 2011 on behalf of Rockpoint Real Estate Fund III, teaming with Donald Saunders and hotel management firm Highgate Hotels to buy the asset from a partnership between Saunders and Starwood Hotels and Resorts. During its ownership, Rockpoint, Saunders and Highgate added 112 hotel rooms and street-level retail at the Boston Park Plaza, as well as updating its lobby, restaurant and guestrooms, to improve revenue and operating profit.  

The private equity real estate firm's Fund III is understood to have owned about 90 percent of the hotel asset, of which 100 percent was sold to Sunstone. The 14-story property, formerly the Statler Hotel, opened in 1927 and is located in Boston's Back Bay district, adjacent to the Boston Common.

Separately, Rockpoint announced that in mid-June it sold its majority interest in the Courtyard by Marriott Waikiki Beach in Hawaii to Highgate, which was managing the hotel, in a deal that valued the property at $125 million. Rockpoint had bought the 401-room property with Lodging Capital Partners for $85 million, also in June 2011 on behalf of Fund III.  

Over the last nine months, Rockpoint has sold or recapitalized seven hotels with a total value of $1.5 billion, including the Alex Hotel, the Flatotel and the Milford Plaza in New York City; the Bacara Resort & Spa in Goleta, California; and the Hotel Le Parc in Paris. In March, the firm held a final closing on $1.95 billion in equity for its most recent real estate opportunity fund, Rockpoint Real Estate Fund IV.