NEW YORK CITY-RLJ Acquisitions LLC, a subsidiary of Bethesda, MD-based hotel investment firm RLJ Lodging Trust, has acquired the formerly-troubled Courtyard by Marriott on the Upper East Side following a bankruptcy court-ordered sale. The company acquired the 226-room hotel from owners Madison 92^nd Street Associates for $82 million, or approximately $363,000 per key at a 7.5% cap rate.

The hotel – located on 410 E. 92^nd St. between York and First Avenues – is situated near the city’s most dense concentration of healthcare establishments, including Mount Sinai Hospital, Rockefeller University, Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Cornell/Weill New York Presbyterian Hospital. But the hotel fell on hard times after the owner went into foreclosure in November 2009 and then filed for bankruptcy in August 2011.

Despite the distress, the property presented a unique opportunity for RLJ, which is framing its overall investment strategy around acquiring “accretive assets that drive shareholder value” that “exhibit high growth and “high barriers-to-entry” characteristics in gateway markets. The company has also snatched up the Residence Inn by Marriott Bethesda Hotel Downtown for $64.5 million at the same time of the Courtyard UES buy, making it two deals that will yield “strong results,” says Thomas J. Baltimore, Jr., president and CEO of RLJ.