Sagamore Hotel in South Beach quietly being marketed for sale

The Sagamore Hotel in South Beach, known for its art-filled lobby and previous bankruptcy filing, is quietly being marketed for sale, several sources told The Real Deal.

The oceanfront hotel, at 1671 Collins Avenue in Miami Beach, is for sale for about $60 million, as it again faces financial hard times, sources told TRD.

Several calls and emails to the hotel’s owners, Sagamore Partners Ltd., led by principals Martin Taplin and Neil Sazant of Martin W. Taplin & Associates, as well as to Josh Gold at that firm, were not returned.

The Sagamore had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October 2011. At the time, Sagamore Partners Ltd. said it filed for bankruptcy to protect the property from a foreclosure suit filed by special servicer LNR Partners. The hotel had defaulted on its $31.5 million mortgage and tried to stop a foreclosure action in 2010. Sagamore Partners said that it stopped making the payments in an effort to restructure the loan, as per LNR’s instructions.

Sagamore art hallway

The 93-room hotel, originally built in 1948, encompasses 92,000 square feet on a 43,125-square-foot site, according to Miami-Dade property records. The five-story property last sold for $315,000 to Sagamore Partners in 1997.

Now, a price of $60 million would equate to $645,161 per room or $652 per square foot for the land.

The all-suite Sagamore, which calls itself  “The Art Hotel,” displays its collection of photography, sculpture and video throughout its common areas and event space, as well as in its Gallery Dining Room and Art Video Bar Lounge, according to its website.

South Beach oceanfront hotels have fetched sky-high prices recently. Last year, Chesapeake Lodging Trust bought the James Royal Palm, less than two blocks away from the Sagamore, for $278 million or $707,000 per room for the 393-room oceanfront hotel.

Also last year, Carey Watermark Investors paid $328.6 million to purchase a majority stake in Key Biscayne’s waterfront Ritz-Carlton condo hotel which has 302 hotel rooms, including 188 condo-hotel units. Blackstone Group also purchased an 85 percent interest in downtown Miami’s InterContinental Miami hotel for $322 million, as part of a $6 billion deal.

This report will be supplemented with more information if it becomes available.