Atlas in the news

07/17/15 Silicon Valley Business Journal By Nathan Donato-Weinstein http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2015/07/17/hotel-los-gatos-bankruptcy-deal-in-works-to-sell.html Delays and false starts may have been a good thing in the on-again, off-again sale of Hotel Los Gatos. More than four years after the upscale 72-room hotel filed for bankruptcy, a buyer finally appears to be in sight — and at a higher price than previous deals that were ultimately scuttled. The question now: Whether the property’s biggest lender will get on board with the deal, or push for what the debtor is calling “a fire sale.” IHA Hotel Group, which also owns San Francisco’s King George Hotel, is in contract to buy the 72-room property for $29.5 million, according to court records filed this week. It would mark the third time the hotel has reached a purchase-and-sale agreement with IHA, but attorneys for the hotel said that environmental hurdles that killed previous sales are nearly cleared. “The sale proceeds will be sufficient to pay all of the Debtor’s creditors in full, with interest,” attorneys for the Los Gatos Hotel Corp., wrote in a status conference statement on July 15, a day after going into contract with IHA. The sale price of roughly $410,000 per room underscores the region’s red-hot…

Real Estate Alert 07/01/15 Hotel owners in the Silicon Valley area have responded to strong investor demand by offering nearly a half-dozen properties in recent weeks. Investors have shown that they’re eager to snap up properties in Silicon Valley and the greater San Francisco Bay Area, where hotels have posted substantial gains in revenue and occupancy thanks largely to the booming technology sector. And with only a few hotels in San Francisco itself hitting the selling block, buyers have been forced to look south. Along the peninsula, investors are finding fresh listings for large hotels in mar­kets such as San Jose, Sunnyvale and Palo Alto. The properties, which have a com­bined valuation of some $600 million, run the gamut from newly renovated luxury hotels to older properties with redevelopment potential. In every instance, brokers project that room rates will continue rising for at least two years. In the first four months of the year, hotels in the San Jose market — which Cruz saw revenue per room rise a whopping 24% from a year earlier, according to STR, which tracks supply and demand data for the hotel industry. That’s on top of a 15.6% increase in 2014 versus the year…

Silicon Valley Business Journal 03/27/15 Record Room Prices Tempt Developers into Hotel Construction By Nathan Donato-Weinstein  http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/print-edition/2015/03/27/record-room-prices-tempt-developers-into-hotel.html Working late into the night during a Mountain View City Council meeting last June, hotel consultant Maurice Robinson missed his flight back to Los Angeles. No worries, he figured. There’s always a place to stay. But as he quickly figured out: If it’s a weekday in Silicon Valley, the answer is — maybe not. “I got on the phone and was calling every hotel in town,” Robinson said. “All the usual suspects were full.” He ended up paying $300 for a third-tier property on El Camino Real. “They probably average about $150 a night,” Robinson said. “But this is the guy’s last room. And I’m probably the first guy to ever pay that.” Ask anyone who has traveled to the Bay Area lately for business, and you’ll likely hear horror stories like Robinson’s. Booming employment — 113,500 jobs were added in 2014 — has brought a surge in weekday business travel. Combine it with little new supply in the last five years, and hotel occupancy in Santa Clara County climbed 32 percent between 2009 and 2014, according to industry tracker STR. Average daily…

The San Diego Union-Tribune 07/02/15 By Lori Weisberg   http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/jul/02/doubletree-hotel-carmel-valley-sold-san-diego-firm/   The 224-room DoubleTree San Diego Del Mar hotel has been sold to a San Diego firm for $40 million, marking the fourth San Diego lodging property to sell in the last couple of months. The buyer, Southwest Value Partners, a private real estate investment firm that focuses on commercial, hospitality and residential properties, declined to comment on its purchase. Among its holdings are the Westin Hilton Head Island Resort & Spa in South Carolina, the InterContinental New Orleans and the Westin San Diego on West Broadway downtown. Brokering the sale on behalf of the seller, PHF Ruby LLC (an affiliate of Fillmore Capital), was CBRE Hotels. The 5-story property on El Camino Real in Carmel Valley originally opened in 1991 and underwent a partial renovation in 2012. While CBRE would not reveal the sales price of the hotel, it was listed as $40 million by Real Capital Analytics, a research company that tracks hotel sales throughout the country. Based on the per-room sales price, it appears Southwest made a good deal, said hotel analyst Alan Reay. “At a per room price of $180,995 it is at the lower end…

05/29/15 The Orange County Register By Hannah Madans   The hotel was built in 1986 by the Irvine Co. and managed by Four Seasons until Irvine Co., which owns it, took over the management 10 years ago. “We continue to do renovations because we are always reinvesting in our properties and seek to be the best and make sure we are relevant to what our customers needs are,” said Ralph Grippo, president of Irvine Co.’s resort division. Grippo said the hotel now has occupancy rates of more than 80 percent and has had positive customer feedback since the renovations. Island Hotel is not the only Irvine Co. resort property to get a facelift. Late last year, Hotel Irvine underwent a complete overhaul to become a trendy lifestyle hotel. The renovations mark a trend in the hospitality industry, which is concentrating on renovating aging properties rather than building new ones. In 2014, 30 hotels were purchased in Orange County, more than double the 14 transactions registered the year before, according to Atlas Hospitality Group, an Irvine-based real estate firm that specializes in hotels. Another hotel undergoing significant change is the Anaheim Majestic Garden Hotel, which shed its parent, Sheraton, last week…