Blackstone Snaps Up Kimpton Hotel Eventi for $175M

IHG Hotels & Resorts’ luxury Kimpton brand is expanding in Manhattan, but its initial foray in the market is about to be under new ownership.

Blackstone is purchasing the Kimpton Hotel Eventi in Chelsea for $175 million, Bloomberg reported. The seller is DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners, a private equity real estate investment firm with offices in Manhattan, Boston and Hong Kong.

The property at 851 Sixth Avenue, at the corner of West 30th Street, opened in 2010, the first Kimpton hotel in New York City. The hotel has 292 rooms and is close to Madison Square Park, Penn Station and the Empire State Building. Features include three restaurants, a 450-spot parking garage and 45,000 square feet of meeting space.

In a statement, Blackstone managing director Michelle Gelshteyn cited the fundamentals of the market, saying that hotel demand is picking up to pre-Covid levels and no construction permits have been filed in the sector for several years, a result of an onerous process in the city.

That’s led to notable sales in New York City’s hotel market in the last year.

Over the summer, Host Hotels & Resorts purchased 1 Hotel Central Park from Starwood Capital Group for $265 million, pulling a $150 million mortgage from the Teachers’ Retirement System of NYC to finance the acquisition of the 229-key hotel.

In September, real estate investment firm Gencom paid $308 million to acquire the 42-story, 587-key Thompson Central Park Hotel at 119 West 56th Street from GFI Capital Resources Group and Elliott Management.

As for Kimpton, it partnered with Gary Barnett’s Extell Development last year on a 529-key project by Rockefeller Center, which is expected to open this year. At the time the partnership was forged, Kimpton had 75 hotels in its portfolio, but a whopping 57 in its pipeline that are expected to open within five years.

Blackstone is facing foreclosure on a $275 million hotel portfolio as bondholders target assets in Chicago, San Francisco, Boston and Philadelphia after the alternative asset manager allegedly failed to pay off the balance of a loan backed by four properties under the Club Quarters brand.

— Holden Walter-Warner