Revealed: Blackstone Pays $148M for Brickell’s East Miami

Blackstone’s purchase price for the 352-key East Miami hotel in Brickell is revealed as nearly $300 million, The Real Deal has learned.

Funds affiliated with New York-based Blackstone bought the 40-story hotel at 788 Brickell Plaza from funds managed by Honolulu, Hawaii-based Trinity Investments and New York-based Certares, the sellers announced in a news release last week, declining to disclose the price. On Tuesday, sources familiar with the deal said the purchase price is nearly $300 million.

The sale closed last week and deeds became public on Friday. According to the deeds, the hotel traded for $147.8 million. Deeds reflect the price of the real estate only and exclude other assets usually included in hotel purchases.

East Miami’s true sale price of nearly $300 million is higher because the purchase includes additional assets, such as furniture and fixtures at the hotel.

East Miami is within the Brickell City Centre mixed-use complex that Miami-based Swire Properties completed in 2016. The complex, which spans about five city blocks, also has about 500,000 square feet of retail; the 43-story Reach and Rise condo buildings; and a pair of office buildings.

East Miami is home to rooftop venue Sugar and has 89 serviced apartments.

Trinity and Certares bought the hotel from Swire in 2021 for $174 million. The price recorded in the deeds for that deal was $120.3 million.

Blackstone, an alternative asset management giant led by CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman, had about $1.2 trillion in assets under management at the end of the second quarter, according to its website.

It’s been active in South Florida recently. This summer, Blackstone and its industrial arm, Link Logistics, sold a 43.7-acre development site for offices and warehouses at 12691 Northwest LeJeune Road in Opa-locka for $105.7 million. The deal brought the sellers’ South Florida sales since November to more than $1 billion.

Blackstone paid $115.9 million for the 359-unit Solea at Miami Lakes apartment complex at 17405 Northwest 94th Court in Miami Lakes in April, and also provided a $300 million loan in May for Karim Alibhai’s Gencom and Edgardo DeFortuna’s Fortune International Group’s renovation of the Ritz-Carlton Key Biscayne at 455 Grand Bay Drive, and planned renovation of the Grand Bay Club at 425 Grand Bay Drive in Key Biscayne.

Brickell emerged as the epicenter of South Florida’s real estate boom, attracting many new-to-market firms expanding to the tri-county region as well as condo developments.

The East Miami trade marks the latest sale of a portion of Brickell City Centre.

In June, Swire sold its 75 percent stake in the retail and parking portion at the complex to Simon Property Group for $512 million. After canceling a planned office supertall on a 2.8-acre Brickell City Centre development site, Swire sold the property to Melo Group for $200 million in May.

Also, Dubai-based hospitality firm Kerzner International paid $45 million for a nearly 1-acre development site at 9 Southeast Sixth Street at Brickell City Centre last month. The site is proposed for 350 condos and 180 hotel keys. Kerzner hasn’t revealed its planned project.