Oakland Marriott City Center Hitting Foreclosure Auction

The largest hotel in Oakland is bound for a foreclosure auction later this month.

The Oakland Marriott City Center, located at 1001 Broadway in the heart of downtown, will sell to the highest bidder after owner Gaw Capital Partners defaulted on a $100 million loan guaranteed by the 500-room hotel, the San Francisco Business Times reported. Hong Kong-based Gaw Capital bought the hotel in 2017 for $143 million, or $286,000 per room.

The 21-story hotel houses the headquarters and practice facility of the Golden State Valkyries, the Bay Area’s new WNBA team. The building is also attached to the Oakland Convention Center, the East Bay’s largest corporate event venue.

Invesco acquired Gaw Capital’s Oakland Marriott debt in May 2024, and an affiliate of the global real estate investor filed the original default notice in February.

The Valkyries team does “not anticipate impact to our business or basketball operations at the Valkyries Performance Center” from the default, the team’s spokesperson told SFGate in February. That training center was the Golden State Warriors’ practice facility before the team departed Oakland in 2019.

In October, the 162-room Courtyard Oakland Downtown was acquired by Core Capital for $10.6 million, marking a 76 percent drop from Gaw’s purchase price. Core Capital is a minor investor in the Oakland Marriott City Center.

Oakland — and the Bay Area at large — is navigating troubled hospitality waters.

The 145-room Waterfront Hotel in Oakland’s Jack London Square closed suddenly in January. Around the same time in January, lenders for the 289-room Radisson Hotel Oakland Airport sued to foreclose on the 8400 Edes Avenue property. The 360-room Hilton Oakland Airport Hotel closed its doors in August.

Last summer, Hawkins Way Capital defaulted on a $112 million loan on the twin AC Hotel and Residence Inn by Marriott at 431 Jefferson Street in downtown Oakland after a year of operation. The property went into foreclosure in April.

Elsewhere in the East Bay, Kubera’s 113-room University Inn & Suites in Berkeley went into foreclosure last month. That property’s estimated value dropped to $12 million from $21.8 million in 2019.

The auction for the Oakland Marriott City Center is scheduled for June 24.

— Chris Malone Méndez