Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc. (BEE) agreed to buy the portion of the Hotel del Coronado from joint-venture partner Blackstone Group LP in a deal that values the property at $787 million. The lodging company will pay $210 million for the 63.6 percent stake, and assume an existing mortgage of about $475 million. And at 757 rooms, that values the famous hotel in excess of $1 million per room, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. The property’s total value excludes about $18 million of cash in the venture.
Blackstone bought a majority stake in the San Diego-area hotel in 2011 and formed a joint venture with Strategic and KSL Resorts to recapitalize the oceanfront resort. The hotel was valued at about $590 million at the time of that purchase.
“In 2012, there were only five hotels that were sold or valued at over a million dollars a room,” hotel broker and analyst Alan Reay of Atlas Hospitality Group told the Union-Tribune. “In 2013, the number was over 20, so the unheard-of million dollars per-room ceiling is definitely being breached.”
Built in 1888, the Hotel del Coronado, featured in the 1959 Billy Wilder film “Some Like It Hot,” had hosted 11 U.S. presidents and dozens of celebrities.
