The 121-year-old Barclay Hotel in Downtown sold for roughly half its original asking price.
The six-floor Beaux Arts hotel at 101 W. 4th Street sold to Downtown-based Golden Hills Properties for $21 million, more than a year after it was listed for $40 million, property records show.
The sale comes out to just under $127,300 per room at the 165-key hotel. The purchase was made with a $22.2 million mortgage from East West Bank.
Golden Hills Properties is owned by Michael Delijani, son of the late L.A. real estate investor Ezat Delijani, and an active investor in his own right. Both had been involved in Downtown politics.
Golden Hills purchased the property through an LLC from which it also acquired a Newport Beach medical center. The firm owns two other Downtown properties — one on either side of South Broadway in Downtown between 6th and 5th streets that it purchased in 2013 and 2015. It also owns a pair of medical offices in Beverly Hills.
The story of the Barclay Hotel is a familiar one in Downtown. Like many turn-of-the-century lodges, the Barclay started off as a regal establishment and declined as Downtown fell out of fashion in the mid-20th century. Designed by L.A. architecture firm Morgan and Walls, it was first called the Van Nuys Hotel and was the first hotel in the city to provide electricity and telephone service to each of its rooms, according to Curbed.
The hotel on the edge of Skid Row was turned into a single-room occupancy establishment at some point during that time and has remained such since. There were around 30 single-resident occupancy tenants living there when it was put on the market, but it’s uncertain how many SRO tenants remain.
The hotel is a city Historical-Cultural Monument, which could complicate any renovation or redevelopment plans.
The hotel could also face stiff competition. More than 10,000 hotel rooms are expected to come online in Los Angeles County over the next few years and many are located in the increasingly trendy Downtown market.