Bloomberg: Billionaire Tilman Fertitta to buy Montage Laguna Beach

Billionaire Tilman Fertitta is nearing a deal to buy the 258-room Montage Laguna Beach resort for at least $650 million.

The casino owner is on the brink of buying the cliffside luxury hotel at 30801 South Coast Highway, the Orange County Register reported, citing Bloomberg News.

The seller would be ChinaDajia Insurance Group, which took over most of the operations of China’s Anbang Insurance Group. The group is shedding much of its hotel portfolio, including the Orange County property.

The Wall Street Journal reported a possible Montage sale without naming a buyer, with a price of nearly $700 million.

Fertitta, named by Forbes as the “World’s Richest Restaurateur,” built his fortune from the restaurant company Landry’s. He’s worth $7.8 billion, according to Forbes.

The Houston-based businessman owns restaurants, hotels, amusement parks and casinos, including the upscale Post Oak Hotel in Houston, multiple Golden Nugget casinos and a 6.2-percent stake in Wynn Resorts, the operator of hotels and casinos in Las Vegas and Macau.

His many restaurant brands include Morton’s the Steakhouse, Chart House, Bubba Gump Shrimp, McCormick and Schmick’s, Claim Jumper and Joe’s Crab Shack, to name a few.

The star of “Billion Dollar Buyer” bought the NBA’s Houston Rockets for $2.2 billion in 2017.

If he buys Montage Laguna Beach for the reported $650 million price, the resort will sell for the second highest price per room ever paid in California, hotel analyst Alan Reay, president of Atlas Hospitality Group, told the Register. The cost would come out to $2.5 million per key.

“Irreplaceable real estate still commands very high prices and seems to be unaffected by the increase in the cost of borrowing/interest rates,” Reay said.

The 258-room Craftsman-style Montage Laguna Beach spans 30 acres atop a seaside bluff within the artist colony. It has three restaurants, two pools and a 20,000-square-foot spa. Rooms cost between $1,240 and $11,200 a night, according to its website.

The Montage opened in 2003, and in 2015 was bought by Strategic Hotels for $360 million – then the highest price paid per hotel room in California, according to the Register.

Strategic sold itself to New York-based Blackstone, which then sold Montage and other Strategic hotels to Anbang in 2016.

Dajia, took over the properties when the Chinese government restructured Anbang, began looking to sell the Montage and Anbang’s luxury US hotels earlier this year. They were part of a portfolio that Anbang agreed to sell in 2019 as part of a deal that fell through as the pandemic crippled the global hotel industry.

— Dana Bartholomew

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