Sea Beach Plaza motel in Fort Lauderdale sells for $5.8M

A 1951 motel in Fort Lauderdale Beach sold for $5.75 million, or about $144,000 per room.

Raj Hotels LLC sold the Sea Beach Plaza motel to Harborage LLC, a Fort Lauderdale-based company controlled by Thomas A. McFall. The 40-room, 14,680-square-foot building last traded for $2.6 million in 2004. Property records show it sits on a 16,182-square-foot lot, which means it sold for about $355 per square foot based on the land.

The seller is a Weston-based entity controlled by Nirmla and Raj G. Motwani.

The Carlyle Group, a global asset manager, owns the area surrounding the Sea Beach Plaza, according to property records.

Fort Lauderdale Beach has been a hotspot of commercial activity. The beach submarket will see a number of new hotels, including the hotel components of the Gale and the Four Seasons. A mixed-use hotel and residential development will replace the Tropicana Motel at 711 North Federal Highway. Developer Dev Motwani, a partner in the Gale project, has also been active in Fort Lauderdale Beach. His family owned and operated motels along Fort Lauderdale’s A1A, and most recently acquired the Tropic Cay Motel that will be part of the Four Seasons Hotel and Residences at 521 to 529 North Fort Lauderdale Beach Boulevard.

In terms of new condo construction, about half of the roughly 700 condos in the pipeline have been presold, according to a February update of a RelatedISG report. And new construction is valued at $1.5 billion.