Host says goodbye to part of NY Marquis: Host Hotels & Resorts sold the New York Marriott Marquis retail, theater, and signage commercial condominium units to New York-based Vornado Realty Trust for US$442 million. Vornado had leased 45,000 square feet of retail space in the hotel prior to the sale. It signed a 20-year lease for the property in 2012 and agreed to spend up to US$140 million to expand it. That lease also gave Vornado the option to buy the space.
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PGA sells to Brookfield: Brookfield Asset Management is under contract to buy the PGA National Resort & Spa in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida for US$255 million. If the sale is completed, Brookfield would pay US$85 million more than what PGA National’s current owner, Walton Street Capital, paid for the property in 2006. The US$255 million sale price, reported by OpenComps (which tracks commercial real estate sales) would equate to about US$752,000 per hotel room.
Playa in Jamaica: Playa Hotels & Resorts will expand its Panama Jack family hotel brand to Jamaica. According to Kevin Froemming, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Playa, the Panama Jack brand could be in Jamaica by as early as 2020 in the form of one or two hotels. Playa currently has Panama Jack hotels in both Cancun and Playa del Carmen, but this would be the brand’s first Caribbean destination.
(Snow) Time to sell: The private owner of three of the ski areas closest to Baltimore, Maryland is selling those properties. Snow Time, which owns the Liberty Mountain Resort, Roundtop Mountain Resort and Whitetail Resort in Pennsylvania has agreed to sell the resorts to Missouri-based ski resort operator Peak Resorts for US$76 million. Snow Time’s three mountains — within a couple of hours drive for much of the Baltimore-Washington market’s estimated 10 million people — attracted more than 600,000 visitors during the 2017-2018 skiing season, generating about US$50 million in revenue, according to the Baltimore Sun.
MGM gets into Ohio: Hard Rock Rocksino Northfield Park is joining the MGM Resorts portfolio, providing MGM entry into the Ohio gaming market. MGM Resorts is acquiring the operating assets of the Rocksino from MGM Growth Properties, which will lease the actual property associated with the Rocksino from a subsidiary of MGP. MGM Growth Properties finalized the US$1 billion purchase of the Rocksino from Milstein Entertainment in July. Now, MGM Resorts will lease the casino from the trust for US$275 million.
New Choice franchisees: Choice Hotels International has reached agreements with longtime franchisees Magnolia Hospitality Group and Champion Hotels for the development of eight midscale hotels to be located throughout the country, which include a mix of new construction and conversion projects as well as a dual-brand location.
Magnolia Hospitality Group will open five new hotels in Texas:
Comfort Inn – Dallas
Comfort Inn – Ft. Worth
Sleep Inn – Dallas
Mainstay Suites – Humble
Mainstay Suites – Dallas
Champion Hotels, which has worked with Choice for four decades, signed franchise agreements for three Comfort properties:
Comfort Inn – Schaumburg, Illinois
Comfort Inn – Bloomington, Minnesota
Comfort Inn – Griswold, Connecticut