NEW YORK CITY-A big deal has gone down on the Bowery: luxury hotelier and residential developer Andre Balazs Properties has acquired the Cooper Square Hotel from Connecticut-based real estate investment firm Westport Capital Partners LLC. The sale price is rumored to be around $91 million, but the company declined to disclose the terms of the deal.
Located at 25 Cooper Square, the 145-unit boutique hotel was completed in 2008. According to Westport, the firm had initially provided mezzanine financing in 2007 to help fund the construction of the hotel. The company then assumed control of the property from the prior owner, a joint venture of the Peck Moss Group and Cardinal Real Estate Investments, in a restructuring that concluded in December 2010. The price of the mezz takeover was $70.9 million, according to Real Capital Analytics.
Under that process, Westport restructured the debt with the hotel’s first mortgage lender, WestLB, and settled outstanding payments to contactors and creditors and completed the last phases of the hotel’s construction, the firm says. During its period of ownership, the hotel’s food and beverage operations were repositioned in partnership with the hotel’s management, Klaus Orlieb and Matthew Moss, where they launched the Trilby, a European-style comfort food restaurant.
As a result, the hotel showed an increase in operating income of over 60% from 2010 to 2011, according to Jordan Socaransky, a principal at Westport. The improvements also caused an increase in the hotel’s average daily rates, which range from $425 to $500 a night, according to its website.
Eastdil Secured worked on behalf of the seller on the transaction, according to RCA.
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