Atlas in the news
21-Story Addition Contemplated for Historic Montgomery Hotel in Downtown San Jose
Silicon Valley Business Journal 05/06/16 21-Story Addition Contemplated for Historic Montgomery Hotel in Downtown San Jose By Nathan Donato-Weinstein http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2016/05/06/21-story-addition-contemplated-for-historic.html It’s easy to miss the narrow parking lot between San Jose’s historic Montgomery Hotel and the back of the Fairmont annex. But this strip of pavement is where the Montgomery’s owner is considering some ambitious plans: A 21-story tower addition that would contain some 280 guest rooms. To fit all those rooms into a narrow footprint, owner Khanna Enterprises would construct Silicon Valley’s first cantilevered tower, with the seventh story stretching out over a portion of the 1911-built Montgomery (now known as the Sheraton Four Points — though long-timers will always call it by the former name). The plans, submitted last month, are preliminary — meaning that they are being being proposed purely for feedback from city staff. A formal proposal could see changes to the design, if it even moves forward. But the mere existence of even an early concept shows strong interest in hospitality in downtown San Jose, which has seen increasing room rates and decreasing availability. Yet unlike other Silicon Valley submarkets, only one new project has broken ground during this cycle — a 210-room AC…
Hold on, Orange County! The Tourists Are Rolling In
Orange County Register 05/05/16 Hold on, Orange County! The Tourists Are Rolling In By Margot Roosevelt, Joseph Pimentel and Hannah Madans http://www.ocregister.com/articles/million-714988-year-california.html …Hotel taxes made up a big slice of the local tourism windfall. Overall, Orange County jurisdictions collected $246 million last year, up 13 percent from 2014. The top five: Anaheim ($118 million), Newport Beach ($20.4 million), Garden Grove ($17.2 million), Dana Point ($12.5 million) and Irvine ($10.6 million). Three new hotels with a total of 606 rooms opened last year, and 11 others –with a total of 2,365 rooms – were under construction. The pace is accelerating: At the end of 2015, planning was underway for 25 more Orange County hotels with 4,200 rooms, according to Alan Reay, president of Irvine’s Atlas Hospitality Group, a hotel brokerage. “The big spike in the numbers right now is just making up for lost years,” Reay said, noting that development had stalled after the recession because of a lack of financing. “Today we have escalating revenues, growth in tourism and corporate business and historically low interest rates,” he said. “All of those are green arrows for a perfect environment for new hotel development.”
Irvine-based Hotel Company Breaks Ground in Napa
Orange County Register 04/29/16 Irvine-based Hotel Company Breaks Ground in Napa By Hannah Madans 04/29/16 http://www.ocregister.com/articles/hotel-714115-group-resort.html Irvine-based Pacific Hospitality Group broke ground on a hotel in Napa on Friday. Meritage Commons will be a four-story, 145-room resort, including 39 suites, an outdoor pool and a food and wine village. The hotel will be across the street from PHG’s The Meritage Resort and Spa, which opened in 2006. Pacific Hospitality group bought nine acres for the new development four years ago. Earlier this year the group purchased the oceanfront Ko’a Kea Hotel & Resort on Kauai. The property was named the most prestigious resort in Hawaii in Conde Nast Traveler’s “Top 25 Resorts in Hawaii: Readers’ Choice Awards 2015.” Terms of the Ko’a Kea deal were not disclosed. The 121-room hotel includes nine suites, a fitness center, spa, pool and 11,170 square feet of meeting space. The hotel’s restaurant, Red Salt, serves seafood and locally sourced produce. An affiliate of Pacific Hospitality Group in September bought a hotel in the iconic French Quarter of New Orleans. The affiliate, Cotton Exchange Investment Properties, bought AC Hotel New Orleans Bourbon/French Quarter from an affiliate of Dallas-based NewcrestImage for an undisclosed price. Pacific Hospitality…
How Hotels Can Gain an Edge This Year
GlobeSt.com 04/06/16 How Hotels Can Gain an Edge This Year By Carrie Rossenfeld http://www.globest.com/sites/carrierossenfeld/2016/04/06/how-hotels-can-gain-an-edge-this-year SAN DIEGO—Being aware of trends in the capital markets, asset management, technology and customer service will serve hoteliers well this year, RAR Hospitality’s president Bob Rauch tells GlobeSt.com. His firm recently held a lodging forecast event here titled “Harnessing the Tailwinds: Capitalizing on the Successes of the Year Ahead.” We spoke exclusively with Rauch and Atlas Hospitality’s group president Alan Reay, who participated in the event, about some of the key takeaways that could help hoteliers gain an edge in a highly competitive industry. GlobeSt.com: How can hotel investors and operators harness the tailwinds and capitalize on the successes of the year ahead? Rauch: The first thing we talked about at the conference is that this is still a very, very strong year. While there may be headwinds in the future, right now everything is going smoothly. Whether it’s an impending terrorist attack, minimum-wage hikes affecting us in the future or Obamacare impacting our costs, these things have not hit us hard because RevPAR is moving at a faster clip than our increases in costs. We say take advantage of that. Don’t just take whatever…
Chinese Buyers Want More Than Big Houses
Orange County Business Journal 04/04/16 Chinese Buyers Want More Than Big Houses Developers, Backers Buy into Commercial Market By Mark Mueller http://www.ocbj.com/news/2016/apr/04/chinese-buyers-want-more-big-houses/ Beijing-based Anbang Insurance Group Co.’s bid to buy two of Orange County’s premier resort properties—Montage Laguna Beach and The Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel—as part of a larger national portfolio deal marks a new high-water mark in Chinese companies’ recent investment push into the area’s commercial real estate sector. Chinese-based investors—along with local investment companies backed by money from China—have poured more than $1 billion into large existing OC properties and big development sites over the past 18 months. That’s more than five times what China-based investors spent annually on real estate deals here a few years ago, according to Business Journal data. Nearly another $2 billion could be spent by many of the same companies to finance ground-up development sites across the county, including locations in Anaheim, Lake Forest and Irvine. Notable recent deals include: • Irvine-based homebuilder Landsea Holdings Corp.’s purchase late last year of the Portola Center South residential development site in Lake Forest, which will hold more than 550 single-family homes and townhomes. The buyer is the U.S. arm of China-based real estate company Landsea…
Is the Hotel-Buying Mania Cooling Off?
The Orange County Register 04/04/16 Is the Hotel-Buying Mania Cooling Off? By Jonathan Lansner http://www.ocregister.com/articles/hotel-710651-year-percent.html Is the hotel business getting the chills? To understand how hot hotels have become, please ponder the Montage Laguna Beach resort. Who wouldn’t want to own the gorgeous seaside resort? Well, it was sold twice last year – and another deal to sell it is in the works. Yes, a hotel buying spree has meant the 250-room Montage has been flipped like an ordinary investment condo. • It started in January 2015, when the Montage was sold by an investment group started by eBay Inc. founder Pierre Omidyar to resort specialists Strategic Hotels. • Before the year was out, Strategic Hotels – whose 18-hotel portfolio includes the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel and San Diego’s Hotel del Coronado – sold itself for $6 billion to real estate investment giant Blackstone Group. • And last month, after just three months of ownership, Blackstone agreed to flip those Strategic hotels – including the Montage – to Chinese insurer Anbang for $6.5 billion. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” said hotel consultant Alan Reay of Atlas Hospitality in Irvine. “These are trophy assets that usually trade once every 10…
California Sees Pricing, Development Boom in 2015
HotelNewsNow 03/23/16 California Sees Pricing, Development Boom in 2015 By Sean McCracken http://www.hotelnewsnow.com/Articles/34508/California-sees-pricing-development-boom-in-2015 REPORT FROM THE U.S.—By just about any metric, California’s hotel industry had a massive 2015. Recent surveys of both transactions and development from Irvine-based Atlas Hospitality Group show records for sales volume, price per room and new construction. California hoteliers said the state’s hotel boom offers both opportunities and challenges as the key performance metrics remain strong, but high demand markets grow more competitive for both projects and consumer dollars. “Some (developers) we’re talking to who were early into the game said they wouldn’t do those deals today,” said Alan Reay, president of Atlas Hospitality Group. “Now they’re only looking for prime, prime markets with high barriers to entry. If I was a developer, I’d be looking at those locations, and I believe there are still opportunities with the right brands.” New builds A total of 34 hotels with 4,395 rooms were completed in California during 2015, according to Atlas’ hotel development survey. The state ended the year with 98 hotels and 15,833 rooms under construction. Reay’s company notes this is a substantial increase over the past couple years. The number of hotels under construction at…
Menlo Park Getting New Hotel and Office Complex
InsideBayArea 03/23/16 Menlo Park Getting New Hotel and Office Complex By George Avalos http://www.insidebayarea.com/breaking-news/ci_29677112/menlo-park-getting-new-hotel-and-office-complex MENLO PARK — Developers on Wednesday launched a dramatic addition to Menlo Park, one of the hubs of venture capital in Silicon Valley, by beginning construction of a luxury high-rise hotel, three office buildings and a fitness center. “This is going to be a real plus for Silicon Valley and Menlo Park,” said Howard Dallmar, an executive managing director with Newmark Cornish & Carey, a commercial realty firm that is seeking tenants for the offices. “You look at the tech companies that need additional space in these markets and they are having difficulty finding offices.” The project consists of a high-rise hotel, three office buildings, a Bay Club fitness center and outdoor activity facilities. Located near the U.S. Highway 101 and Marsh Road interchange, the mixed-use complex is being built by a joint venture of Bohannon Development, Ensemble Real Estate Investments and AECOM Capital. “The end result will re-confirm Menlo Park’s position at the historic heart of Silicon Valley innovation and, at the same time, transform this industrial neighborhood into a vibrant environment for people and business,” said David Bohannon, a senior vice president with…
Atlas Hospitality Group Presents The INDUStry Show
Atlas Hospitality Group, Abacus Payroll Services and Highglow Jewelers present The INDUStry Show. The INDUStry Show is a DesiPreneur Media Production in collaboration with Funny Indian, Inc. Hosted by Rajiv Satyal, it is a spontaneous, funny and insightful conversation with Indian entrepreneurs. https://www.facebook.com/theindustryshow http://www.desipreneur.com/
Montage Sold a Third Time?
Laguna Beach Independent 03/17/16 Montage Sold a Third Time? By Andrea Adelson https://www.lagunabeachindy.com/montage-sold-third-time/ In the ‘80s, Japanese investors snapped up trophy properties like Rockefeller Center in New York and Arco Towers in Los Angeles. Now, a new wave of mergers flows from China. The latest stems from Anbang Insurance Group, intent on assembling a portfolio of trophy hotel properties worldwide, including the company controlling Montage Laguna Beach. Anbang is negotiating with Blackstone Group’s Strategic Hotels & Resorts, Montage Laguna Beach managing director Rick Riess confirmed this week. “No transaction has been finalized nor do we have additional information to share at this time,” he said in a statement. The Montage will continue to be operated by Montage Hotels & Resorts under an already-existing long-term management contract, Reiss said. “Our associates and guests will continue to enjoy business as usual going forward under the current leadership team.” If the deal goes through, Anbang becomes the third owner of the ocean-front property in little more than a year. Strategic Hotels & Resorts purchased Montage in 2015 for $360 million, but before the year was out sold itself to the New York private equity firm. Blackstone acquired the Montage and 16 other properties…
Group Led by Chinese Firm Anbang Bids $12.8 Billion for Starwood Hotels
Los Angeles Times 03/15/16 Group Led by Chinese Firm Anbang Bids $12.8 Billion for Starwood Hotels James F. Peltz & Julie Makinen http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-anbang-blackstone-20160315-story.html Nearly 30 years after cash-rich Japanese companies began snapping up prime U.S. real estate, Chinese companies are following suit at a record pace as they search for solid international investments to make up for slowing growth at home. The latest is Anbang Insurance Group Co., a once-obscure Chinese insurer that’s taking a fast, multibillion-dollar ride up to the penthouse of the American hotel industry, aided perhaps by its ties with Chinese political leaders. Formed only 12 years ago, Anbang is aggressively trying to buy luxury U.S. hotel properties from Southern California to New York in $21 billion worth of potential deals. On Monday, Anbang led a group making an unsolicited $12.8-billion offer for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., which owns the Westin and Sheraton brands, among others. That came only days after Anbang reportedly agreed to buy Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc., whose posh properties include the Hotel del Coronado near San Diego, from the private equity firm Blackstone Group for $6.5 billion. Anbang in late 2014 also bought the famed Waldorf Astoria hotel on…
