Miramar-based firm plans to renovate low-occupancy La Quinta hotel in Sebring

RivieraPoint Invest + Develop paid $7.25M for the 77-room hotel and plans to spend another $1.8M to renovate it

La Quinta Inn & Suites in Sebring
La Quinta Inn & Suites in Sebring

A Miramar-based firm acquired a low-occupancy hotel in Sebring for $7.25 million and plans $1.8 million of upgrades to the 10-year-old property.

RivieraPoint Invest + Develop paid about $94,000 per room for the 77-room La Quinta Inn & Suites hotel in an off-market transaction.

RivieraPoint assumed a $4.74 million loan from Wells Fargo Bank as part of the transaction.

The seller was Tampa-based Liberty Group, led by its chief executive officer Punit Shah, a part-owner of the Miami Marlins baseball team.

Rodrigo Azpurua, president and CEO of RivieraPoint, expects to raise the hotel’s average occupancy rate from 66 percent to 80 percent by upgrading the property’s rooms, lobby, gym, meeting rooms and façade.

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“Our projections show we can achieve a 24 percent return on our investment in the next 5 years,” Azpurua said in a prepared statement. “The demand for well-positioned hotels in the area close to the Sebring International Raceway and many other attractions is strong.”

The La Quinta acquisition put RivieraPoint closer to its goal of owning 1,500 hotel rooms in the Southeast by 2020.

The company is now building a 155-room Radisson RED hotel near Miami International Airport, scheduled to open in mid-2019.

RivieraPoint is also is leading developer of suburban office space in South Florida, and its assets include the 73,000-square-foot Professional Center at RivieraPoint in Miramar.  – Mike Seemuth