Westbrook Partners Selling Pair of Ritz-Carlton Hotels

Westbrook Partners is still in selling mode, parting ways with not one, but two Ritz-Carlton hotels in major markets.

The company is selling the properties on Central Park South in New York City and in Washington, D.C.’s West End, Bloomberg reported. The deals for the properties are complete, but the sale price of both could not immediately be discerned.

While the properties feature the same seller, they do not feature the same buyer. Lodging investor Gencom is picking up the 253-key Manhattan building, while Trinity Investments is acquiring the 300-key building in the nation’s capital.

Westbrook did not respond to a request for comment, while Trinity declined to comment. The founder of Gencom, meanwhile, released a statement highlighting “compelling long-term opportunities” in the Big Apple.

Such opportunities exist in the luxury hotel market across the country. Last year, revenue per available room across luxury chains rose 5.1 percent, according to CoStar. For the entire hotel industry in the nation, there was a decline last year in the industry standard metric.

Nevertheless, it’s a sector Westbrook is increasingly looking to exit. In November, Blackstone agreed to buy the 277-key Four Seasons hotel at 757 Market Street in San Francisco for about $130 million, or $469,300 per key.

The transaction represents Blackstone’s first hotel purchase in San Francisco in about a decade. The price is notably under the $181.6 million that Westbrook was asking when it listed the property.

Gencom is on the other side of the spectrum.

A group of investors, including Highgate, Gencom and Argent Ventures, purchased the 36-story, 607-room InterContinental New York Times Square for approximately $230 million at the tail end of last year.

The property was sold by a joint venture of Tishman Realty and Metlife Investment Management and the purchase was financed by a $190 million loan from Monroe Capital.

— Holden Walter-Warner