Pier 66 hotel and marina for sale, likely for $200M
Fort Lauderdale’s famous Hyatt Regency Pier Sixty-Six hotel and marina is for sale.
CBRE Hotels is marketing the 384-room hotel and marina at 2301 SE17th St. without a listed price, although the firm expects it to sell for about $200 million.
The property, owned by the Blackstone Group of New York, will not necessarily retain the Hyatt brand and is approved for additional mixed-use development, CBRE said Wednesday.
“This is an extraordinary waterfront development opportunity in the yachting capital of theworld,” said Christian Charre, CBRE senior vice president, part of the team helping to sell the waterside complex. “Fort Lauderdale’s lodging and residential market continues to strengthen, and this will appeal to investors pushing beyond the Miami market in search of higher yields.”
The Fort Lauderdale marina opened in the late 1950s as a fuel dock for Phillips 66 Petroleum Co. Phillips later developed a yacht club on the site and in 1957 opened the 100-room Pier Sixty-Six hotel.
A new17-story tower was added in 1965 to meet growing consumer demand.
The tower’s signature crown dominated the Fort Lauderdale skyline at that time and included a revolving cocktail lounge that offered views of the waterways as its floor slowly circulated every 66 minutes.
Years later, the rooftop area was converted into a special occasion venue called Pier Top.
The “66” theme is featured in other parts of the hotel’s design as well.
There are 66 pointed Statue of Liberty-type spikes around the tower’s crown, whichwas designed by Richard F. Humble and built in 1966, General Manager Marcos Borras said.
“It’s described as space-age mid-century modern architecture,” Borras said.
Today, in addition to the tower, the Hyatt Regency Pier Sixty-Six hotel has two lanai-style two-story buildings, five food and beverage outlets, three pools, a spa and a 41,000-square-foot event room.
The site has been approved for 58 new luxury residential units in two11-story towers with more than 30,000 square feet of retail and office space, CBRE said. It also includes more than 230 new parking spaces and rooftop pool and gardens.
The hotel’s 127-slip marina— one of sites of the annual Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show— recently completed a $23 million renovation that included new dock space for superyachts 150 feet or more in length.
Blackstone, a private equity firm, acquired the site and two other South Florida hotels in 2004 from H. Wayne Huizenga’s Boca Resorts
Inc. as part of a $1.25 billion deal.
The other South Florida properties were the Boca Raton Resort & Club and the Radisson Bahia Mar (now Bahia Mar Fort Lauderdale Beach).
In July 2014, Blackstone sold its remaining 48-year lease on Bahia Mar and its marina to a new ownership group led by Tate Capital of North Miami and Rok Acquisitions of Miami.
The Boca Raton resort was put up for sale in November 2014.
Broward property records list the market value for the Hyatt hotel and marina site at $77.5 million. CBRE officially launched the effort to market the hotel Wednesday.
The initial stage of soliciting domestic and foreign buyers is expected to take eight to10 weeks, Charre said. After that, formal bids will be requested.
The complexity of the property— hotel, marina and future development parts— makes it challenging to predetermine a selling price, he said.
“There’s no asking price, butwe think it probably will sell somewhere close to $200 million,” Charre said. “We expect a lot of interest in this property and a highly competitive enviroment with several rounds of bidding and a wide range of offers.”
Although Blackstone is under no obligation to sell, the deal could close by the end of June if the right offer came along, Charre said.
Once the property is sold, Blackstone would deliver the hotel to its new owner without a brand or management firm. Existing agreements with Hyatt Hotels and Interstate Management Co. are set to expire in 2016.
Charre said Blackstone
decided thiswas the right time to sell after owning the property for more than a dozen years.
“Also, they waited first to get the development entitlements approved by the city of Fort Lauderdale before selling the asset, which will have value for a new owner,” Charre said.
Jack McCabe, a real estate analyst in Deerfield Beach, said Blackstone is likely to get top dollar by selling now. “[It] may have the best pool of buyers and the best pricing in the market right now,” he said.
McCabe conducted the market feasibility study on Diplomat Resort & Spa for Thayer Lodging Group, which acquired the 998-room Hollywood hotel in August 2014 and other nearby land and assets in a $535.5 million deal.
That same year, Broward saw several other high-priced hotel deals.
Two landmark Fort Lauderdale properties— Westin Beach Resort & Spa and Sheraton Fort Lauderdale Beach Hotel — sold to new owners for $149 million and $107 million respectively. Another, the former B Ocean Fort Lauderdale (nowthe Sonesta Fort Lauderdale), changed hands earlier in 2014 for $65 million.
“We’ve seen [sale] prices really escalate on hotels in recent years, but 2016may be the year of pinnacle pricing in this boom phase,” McCabe said.