Ohana closes on historic Claremont Hotel in Berkeley for $163M

The price Ohana Real Estate paid for the 108-year-old Claremont Hotel & Spa on the edge of Berkeley totaled to $163.3 million.

The Redwood City-based investor closed on the purchase last week of the 276-room hotel at 41 Tunnel Road in Claremont, the San Francisco Business Times reported.

The price works out to $591,700 per room.

The historic hotel, straddling Berkeley and Oakland on 22 acres at the base of the Berkeley hills, includes a 20,000-square-foot luxury spa and a private health club with more than 1,500 members. The Tudor-style chateau, built in 1915, has an iconic bell tower and many gables.

The sellers were Toronto-based FRHI Hotels & Resorts, which owns the luxury Fairmont Hotel brand, and the Blum Group, owned by financier Richard Blum, the late husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

They bought the landmark hotel in 2014 for $86 million, then launched a multimillion-dollar renovation.

The hotel property was anchored by a $120 million commercial mortgage-backed securities loan, which was refinanced in 2019 for $125 million and set to mature in July.

The hotel was appraised last July for $182.8 million, which comes out to $662,318 per room.

The hotel, operated by Fairmont, has struggled to regain its occupancy since the pandemic, according to the CMBS report. Average occupancy was projected to be 76.6 percent from 2018 to last year. From June 2021 to last June, it was 55 percent.

The Claremont took in $62.8 million last year, compared with $40.4 million in 2021 and $21.9 million in 2020, when the hotel spent most of the year closed because of pandemic shutdowns.

Plans by the former owners to build 44 condominiums on its parking lot are now dead after a seven-year fight with Oakland planners, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Hotel prices across the state remain robust following the pandemic, especially for luxury resort properties like the Claremont, according to the Business Times.

In Alameda County, the median key price for a dozen hotel deals last year jumped 42 percent year-over-year to $235,714, led by the $37.5 million sale of the 125-room Towneplace Suites in Newark.

In 2021 Ohana sold the 130-room Montage Healdsburg luxury resort on 258 acres in Sonoma County to Sunstone Hotel Investors for $265 million, or a near record $2 million per key. 

— Dana Bartholomew

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