The Orange County Register
10/30/15

Hyatt Regency in Garden Grove Sold to Chinese Buyer for $137 Million
By Jonathan Lansner

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/hotel-689967-hotels-room.html
The rush for hotels rolls on: A Chinese construction company has just bought the Hyatt Regency Orange County in Garden Grove for $137 million.

SCG America, the U.S. arm of the giant Shanghai Construction Group, acquired the 656-room hotel, built in 1986. The seller, the Xenia Hotels & Resorts real estate trust, paid $112 million for the hotel in 2008, near the previous real estate peak.

The Chinese company is interested in the cash flow from the hotel’s operations as well as development potential on the 9.4- acre site, said Harry Pflueger, a principal with Maxim Hotel Brokerage, which helped SCG with the deal.

Hyatt Regency, just down the street from Disneyland and the Anaheim Convention Center, should benefit from expansion plans for both places, Pflueger said. The hotel has been 77 percent full this year with an average room rate of $154 a night.

“The market’s very hot,” said Pflueger, referring to the pace of California hotel deals. “Nobody has a perfect crystal ball, but there’s a pretty good three-year landing strip to this cycle.”

This sale is the continuation of a buying spree in which California hotels have been snapped up.

Two of Orange County’s landmark luxury hotels, the 393-room Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel and the 250-room Montage Laguna Beach, will be bought by Blackstone Group as part of its $6 billion acquisition of Strategic Hotels & Resorts.

A record $4.4 billion was spent to buy 174 California hotels in the first half of the year, according to Atlas Hospitality Group of Irvine.