The 340-room, all-suites hotel was built in 1987 and is steps from the neighboring Westfield UTC mall

By Lori Weisberg | lori.weisberg@sduniontribune.com | The San Diego Union-Tribune

PUBLISHED: January 13, 2026 at 6:00 AM PST | UPDATED: January 13, 2026 at 10:05 AM PST

The Embassy Suites by Hilton San Diego La Jolla has been sold to a Los Angeles-based investment company for $111 million — slightly more than half the price of just four years ago.

The sale of the 340-room all-suites property, located across from the Westfield UTC, marks the highest-priced San Diego County hotel transaction of 2025, despite what appears to be a deeply discounted price, according to the brokerage firm Atlas Hospitality Group.

Selling the hotel was BioMed Realty, a San Diego firm that is focused more on the life science and technology industries, although BioMed is owned by Blackstone, a mammoth private equity firm that does invest in hotels. The Embassy Suites is located close to the i3 life science and technology complex in the UTC area that is owned by BioMed and was formerly leased to Illumina.

In a statement provided Monday by a BioMed spokesperson, the firm said that the property was originally acquired “as a redevelopment opportunity. Given the current strength of our existing redevelopment pipeline, we elected to sell and shift our focus to other projects in the market.”

A spokesperson for Blackstone late Monday added some more context behind the sale, stating that the purchase in 2021 “was a small investment, and the original business plan for this asset changed since our acquisition.”

The hotel sale, which closed last month, was notable, says Atlas, for how much lower the purchase price was compared to when BioMed bought the property from Sunstone Hotel Investors in December of 2021 for $215.6 million. At the time of the acquisition, the speculation was that BioMed might want to redevelop a portion of the hotel given the high demand then for life science lab space.

“I’d say the price that was paid, which is $326,000 per suite, represents about 50 to 75% below (hotel) replacement cost,” said Alan Reay, president of the Orange County-based Atlas Hospitality.

“If we were talking about a hotel in Silicon Valley, Oakland, San Francisco, that would be different, but I haven’t seen anything trade in San Diego at a 50% discount from what it traded for before. And Blackstone is not an unsophisticated hotel owner. It’s one of largest hotel owners in the U.S. But it did pay above market price.”

Purchasing the property is Ascendant Capital Partners, which currently owns 14 hotels, including several Embassy Suites properties. The firm has plans to invest roughly $20 million in renovations later this year, with improvements planned for the guest rooms and meeting spaces, the atrium, lobby and restaurant, said Alex Halpern, co-founder of Ascendant.

“We plan to bring it back to modern standards and because the last owner, Blackstone, was a very good steward and maintained the building quite well, it means almost all the money we’re spending will be guest-facing and result in a very invigorated product in a market that we absolutely love,” Halpern said.

The Embassy Suites, which is designed around an open-air atrium, was built in 1987 was last renovated in 2018, so it is overdue for a near-term refresh. Its amenities include a restaurant and lounge with indoor and patio seating, a fitness center, indoor pool and whirlpool, business center, meeting spaces, and 354 parking spaces.

Michael Stathokostopoulos, senior director of hospitality analytics for the CoStar Group, said it’s likely that property improvements, which can be costly and are typically required by hotel brands when there’s a change in ownership, accounted in part for the discounted price paid by Ascendant.

He also pointed out that hotel pricing in 2021 reflected growing optimism in the lodging industry as post-pandemic travel surged, and investors were projecting aggressive growth.

“Broader hotel investment volume slowed materially since 2023 as tighter capital markets and higher interest rates made buyers more conservative; this can depress pricing on assets,” Stathokostopoulos said. “Pricing in 2025 reflects a more cautious capital market, with elevated interest rates, slower long-haul international demand, tighter underwriting, and a broader slowdown in hotel transaction activity.”