Less than five years after acquiring the Hilton Baton Rouge Capitol Center downtown, Columbus, Ohio-based Rockbridge Capital is trying to sell the 291-room hotel.
The property is on the market for an undisclosed price, though sources familiar with the property say the owners are asking for somewhere between $60 million and $65 million. Dallas-based real estate firm Holliday Fenoglio Fowler is handling the listing.
HFF brokers did not return calls seeking comment.
It is unclear why Rockbridge is putting the property on the market. Rockbridge officials decline to comment on the listing, as does the hotel’s management company, Prism Hotel and Resorts.
In the 11 years since the Hilton opened, however, downtown has seen the addition of four new hotels, including a Hampton Inn and the full-service Watermark, which is an upscale Marriott Autograph property. A Courtyard Marriott is also under construction and is scheduled to open late this year.
In its offering memorandum, HFF notes that the hotel’s “high-quality facilities … have been impeccably maintained and require minimal capital investment from a future investor.”
The investment overview goes on to note that the property is being sold unencumbered of management, “providing complete operational flexibility and potential upside to a new owner.”
The Hilton, originally the site of the Heidelberg Hotel, was developed in 2006 by Commercial Properties Realty Trust, the real estate arm of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation. It spent more than $70 million restoring the property. Rockbridge, which acquired it for some $40 million six years later, spent another $8.7 million renovating it in 2014.
Though hotel data on the downtown submarket is not available, statistics for the market overall show that the number of hotel rooms in the Capital Region has increased significantly, from fewer than 10,000 in early 2010 to more than 12,000 today. Despite the increased inventory, occupancy and revenue rates have continued to inch up. Overall occupancy at the end of 2016 was nearly 70%, according to Smith Travel Research.
The developer of the downtown Courtyard Marriott recently described the downtown submarket as “steady.”
“Not strong,” said Windsor Aughtry’s Bill Fayssoux. “But steady.”
—Stephanie Riegel
