Mission Capital Advisors announced that its Debt and Equity Finance Group has arranged an $80-million, non-recourse, structured loan for the Chicago Athletic Association hotel, a historic 241-key lifestyle hotel located at 12 South Michigan Avenue in Downtown Chicago. Mission Capital’s team—Jordan Ray, Ari Hirt, Steven Buchwald, and David Behmoaras—represented a joint venture of AJ Capital Partners, Geolo Capital, and Agman in securing the loan from Deutsche Bank. The partnership will use the loan proceeds to retire the construction loan on the landmarked building that served as an elite private men’s athletic club from the time it opened in 1893 until 2007. After purchasing the historic building in 2013, ownership meticulously restored the property before launching the award-winning boutique hotel.
Below are other highlights from this month’s hospitality deals and acquisitions:
Hotelbeds Group, a global bedbank and business-to-business provider of services to the travel industry, completed a deal to make Tourico Holidays part of its group. A strategic plan is in development to combine both businesses in stages. While the integration progresses, Tourico will be a business unit in the group. In due course, both hotel and ancillaries partners and clients of each company will have access to the complete range of services and technology solutions currently available from both Hotelbeds Group and Tourico Holidays. Tourico Holidays founder Uri Argov has made the decision to retire but will remain a shareholder of the combined company. Asi Ginio, who has been with the company since 1999 and is currently COO, will now step into the CEO role while the company transitions to full integration.
AJ Capital Partners closed a $275 million debt refinancing of its portfolio of nine Graduate Hotels with Blackstone Real Estate‘s debt strategies group. The nine Graduate locations include 1,388 guest rooms located in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Athens, Georgia; Berkeley, California; Charlottesville, Virginia.; Lincoln, Nebraska; Madison, Wisconsin; Oxford, Mississippi; Richmond, Virginia; and Tempe, Arizona. Graduate Hotels are part of a curated collection of hotels that reside in university-anchored cities across the country. AJ Capital Partners is planning an additional seven Graduate Hotels locations including previously announced projects in Bloomington, Indiana; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Seattle, Washington; and on New York City’s Roosevelt.
Woodbine Development Corporation, a full-service real estate development company, created of Woodbine Legacy Investments (WLI), a real estate fund capitalized by select family offices, foundations, and institutions. The $85 million fund represents $250 million in purchasing power, which will be used for acquiring and investing in branded, boutique, and independent hospitality assets across the United States. WLI will pursue lower-risk, conservatively leveraged full-service and upscale select-service hotels in high-barrier-to-entry markets—seeking out strategic cash-flowing properties with the intention of longer-term holds while maintaining the option for opportunistic exit timelines when conditions warrant.
