Marriott Hotel in Marin County Trade for $38M

Denver-based Cornerstone Holdings acquired a Marriott brand hotel in Marin County for nearly $40 million, according to public records. The seller was San Rafael Hillcrest, a limited liability company owned by Milpitas resident Beth Gamble.

Cornerstone purchased Four Points by Sheraton in San Rafael for $38 million. The property is located at 1010 Northgate Drive and is 133,000 square feet. The hotel has 127 rooms and brings in an annual revenue of $4.7 million, according to public records. Amenities on site include a pool, hot tub, meeting space, a restaurant and a fitness center.

The price works out to $299,000 per room.

The San Rafael deal fetched more than other similar deals in the Bay Area. A Marriott Residence Inn-branded property in the East Bay sold for $28 million, and a Wyndham hotel near the San Francisco Airport traded for $31 million.

Cornerstone Holdings was founded in 1917 and is a developer as well as owner. The company has projects throughout the country and beyond, including a project of nearly 2,000 acres in San Jose del Cabo in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur, which has resort-style amenities with golf and yachting featured prominently.

While Marin County’s hospitality market doesn’t usually see much action, elsewhere in the Bay Area properties have traded as the sector tries to recover from the pandemic. There are more transactions taking place for lesser amounts than before the pandemic.

San Francisco more than doubled the number of hotel sales in 2022 from six to 13, up 117 percent. However, the total dollar amount went up by just 6.6 percent from $567 million to $604 million, and the average price per room decreased 27 percent from $400,000 per room to $293,000, according to consulting firm Atlas Hospitality. That puts the Marin Marriott deal just above the average.

The 336-room Ritz Carlton in San Francisco was the largest and highest priced hotel sale in 2022, trading for nearly $207 million.

“The number of sales in San Francisco County jumped over 116 percent, but this was because of the sale of a number of lower-priced hotels. Individual sales more than doubled, but San Francisco County had the steepest decline in median price per room than any other county in California,” Alan Reay, president of Atlas, said.

Several Bay Area hotels have struggled to make their debt payments, due to the region ranking near the bottom in terms of tourism recovery from the pandemic.