Ketu Amin to Buy Chicago Westin Hotel for $72 Million

One of Chicago’s biggest hotels is trading hands in a deal that sheds light on the city’s hospitality rebound and the deep discounts still shaping it.

Suburban investor and IT executive Ketu Amin is under contract to buy The Westin Michigan Avenue Chicago for about $72 million, Crain’s reported, citing sources familiar with the deal. That’s under $96,000 per key for the property at 909 North Michigan Avenue.

The seller of the 752-key property is Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, a Maryland-based REIT that’s been marketing the hotel since last year.

The sale extends a string of bargain-basement deals downtown as rising rates and lagging business travel weigh on hotel values. The purchase price amounts to less than a 5 percent cap rate, a source told the outlet, but Amin declined to confirm.

Pebblebrook acquired the Westin in 2018 through its $715 million buyout of LaSalle Hotel Properties, valuing it then at about $156 million. Before that, LaSalle bought the property in 2006 for nearly $215 million and poured $49 million into upgrades including guest rooms, public space renovations and upgrades to building systems that began in 2012.

Pebblebrook sold the hotel’s ground-floor retail space for $27 million last year, but the pending sale of the hotel itself would mark a painful write-down for the REIT.

Amin’s move follows a similar opportunistic play earlier this year, when one of his entities paid $28.3 million for the dual-branded Hampton Inn/Homewood Suites Mag Mile, well below its pre-pandemic value. His Schaumburg-based IT firm VinaKom has helped bankroll a growing hospitality portfolio run through Vinayaka Hospitality, managed by his wife, Komal Patel.

The group’s holdings stretch from the Westin North Shore in Wheeling to multiple Marriott and Hilton-branded hotels around O’Hare and Oak Brook.

JLL brokers Adam McGaughy and John Nugent are marketing the Westin on Pebblebrook’s behalf and previously pitched it as a redevelopment candidate.

When its Marriott Westin franchise and management deals expire next year, a buyer could rebrand or even split the property into dual flags, as it includes a two aging highrises that opened about a decade apart: a 15-story west tower that opened in 1963 and an adjoining 26-story east tower completed in 1972.

— Eric Weilbacher