Blackstone has bought the Hyatt Regency San Francisco for $279 million, adding to its growing hotel portfolio in the capital of artificial intelligence.
The New York-based investor purchased the 821-room hotel at 5 Embarcadero Center, across from the historic Ferry Building in the Financial District, the Commercial Observer and SFGate reported. The seller was Sunstone Hotel Investors, based in south Orange County.
The deal for the 17-story hotel once known as the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero works out to nearly $340,000 per room. Hyatt will stay on to manage the hotel.
Sunstone bought the then 802-room hotel in 2013 for $262.5 million, or nearly $327,000 per room.
During the pandemic lull, the owners sank $50 million into updating rooms, while adding 19 more rooms, 80,000 square feet of meeting rooms and fixing the floor of its Equinox restaurant, now called the Regency Club Lounge, to once again rotate overhead.
The Hyatt Regency, a corrugated concrete landmark designed by John Portman that opened along the waterfront in 1973, featured the world’s largest hotel lobby by volume — with an atrium measuring 170 feet tall by 170 feet wide.
The brutalistic building, with its cavernous pyramidal lobby, spinning rooftop restaurant and glass capsule elevators, featured in such films as “The Towering Inferno” and “High Anxiety.”
Its futuristic design, with its lofty urbanism, later became a target of critics, according to SFGate.
The purchase by Blackstone indicates its confidence in a city driven by a boom in artificial intelligence and a corresponding economic rebound led by Mayor Daniel Lurie, Scott Trebilco, senior managing director at Blackstone Real Estate, told the Observer.
As an epicenter for tech innovation, San Francisco has the highest concentration of AI firms in the world, with 60 percent of new AI investment happening in the city, according to Crunchbase.
In December, Blackstone purchased the 277-room Four Seasons San Francisco for $130 million, and in April picked up the 712-acre Stanly Ranch an hour from Napa Valley via a foreclosure auction for $195 million. In 2024, it acquired the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Downtown SoMa.
Blackstone’s hospitality platform, BRE Hotels & Resorts, owns dozens of hotels in California, including the historic Hotel del Coronado near San Diego. It has two other San Francisco properties: Hilton Garden Inn San Francisco Airport North and Hotel Kabuki.
Beyond the Bay Area, Blackstone has been investing heavily in hotels, with demand driven by leisure, group and business travel, according to the Observer.
Its latest acquisitions include East Miami Hotel, Sunseeker Resort Charlotte Harbor, Kimpton Eventi Hotel in New York and Hyatt Regency Clearwater Beach Resort on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
– Dana Bartholomew
Read more
Commercial
San Francisco
Blackstone buys Napa Valley Auberge resort out of foreclosure
Commercial
San Francisco
Blackstone buys SF Four Seasons amid hotel market comeback