Fremont Marriott Hotel Joins String of Bay Area Sales

A Silicon Valley hotel has found a buyer in a more than $50 million deal, presenting a rare bright spot in a battered lodging market.

SRE Acquisitions purchased the 357-room Fremont Marriott Silicon Valley for roughly $53 million, the Silicon Valley Business Journal reported. Ashford Hospitality Trust sold the property at 46100 Landing Parkway after purchasing it in 2014 for $50 million.

Ashford Hospitality also owns the Embassy Suites hotel in Santa Clara and the Hilton Santa Cruz/Scotts Valley in Santa Cruz. Last year, the Dallas-based real estate investment trust defaulted on a $22 million mortgage loan for the Hilton Santa Cruz hotel, joining a long line of hotel properties in the Bay Area to fall into default over the past two years. Those distressed properties have often traded for far less than the $53 million spent by SRE.

The $53 million sale “speaks to both the confidence of the investment community in Fremont” and “gives an opportunity to put fresh capital and breathe new life into the property,” Donovan Lazaro, economic development director for the City of Fremont, told the Business Journal.

Fremont has become a hotspot for artificial intelligence and other technology manufacturing in Silicon Valley as the AI boom reshapes the broader commercial and residential real estate landscapes in the region. The hotel market has been slower to bounce back as demand for housing and offices picks up speed. Last month, another hotel in the city, the 151-room Hyatt Place Fremont/Silicon Valley, sold to Blue Diamond Hospitality for $13.2 million, a fraction of its most recent assessed value of $20.1 million.

The Fremont Marriott Silicon Valley was originally developed in 1999 and features a restaurant, bar, lounge, fitness center and meeting space. In 2013, before Ashford took ownership of the property, it underwent an $8.1 million renovation effort.

— Chris Malone Méndez