Oxnard Marriott sold for $11.4M
Nearly two years after a court appointed a receiver to take control of the Courtyard by Marriott in Oxnard after it was foreclosed upon, the hotel has been sold for $11.4 million.
HREC Investment Advisors, a hospitality real estate advisory firm based in Denver and Los Angeles, arranged the sale of the 166-room hotel. The firm was acting as a representative of LNR Partners, a special servicer that a Ventura County Superior Court judge appointed to maintain and manage the property, it said in an Aug. 9 news release.
The hotel is located next to the Topa Tower in Oxnard, adjacent to Highway 101.
“The buyer sees tremendous upside through the extensive planned renovation for the Courtyard by Marriott, which includes the new Marriott Courtyard lobby and bistro concept as well as extensive upgrades in the rooms that are already underway,” Michael Blahosky, senior vice president of HREC’s Los Angeles office, said in a release.
HREC officials did not immediately return calls from the Business Times regarding the identity of the buyer.
The Courtyard by Marriott, along with the Residence Inn by Marriott in Oxnard, has been embroiled in a lawsuit since November 2010, when a partnership filed suit against the hotels’ owner, an entity owned by an arm of Credit Suisse. The suit alleged that the two properties were part of a $130.1 million loan that had been in default since September 2009. According to the complaint, the borrower owed a total of $162.8 million with interest, an amount that encompassed loans for the Oxnard properties as well as those for a hotel in Riverside, two in Sacramento and one in Oregon. The loan was made in 2007 by European real estate bank Eurohypo AG to a Credit Suisse partnership that purchased the group of hotels. That partnership, RECP CY Oxnard LLC, a subsidiary of Credit Suisse-controlled DJL Real Estate Capital Partners, is the defendant named in the suit.
The plaintiff in the suit also sought the appointment of a receiver to take over management of the hotels from Los Angeles-based Lighthouse Lodging Group. The complaint said Lighthouse was mismanaging the properties and “harming the goodwill of the hotel in a manner that is further deteriorating” their values. LNR Partners was thereafter put in charge of the receivership.
According to the news release from HREC, the hotel is not under contract with a management company, leaving the new owner free to appoint its own manager.
According to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings, it received $15.6 million of the 2007 loan amount and was valued that year at $23.5 million.
