Crescent Rakes in $445M for Five Hotels, One Office |
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Moving forward fast with its plan to become a pure-play office REIT, Crescent Real Estate Equities Co. just sold five hotel and resort properties and one premier office building for $445 million. The news comes on the heels of the company's announcement earlier this week of its pending $6.5 billion acquisition by Morgan Stanley Real Estate.
The assets involved in the transaction include Colorado's 613-room Denver Marriott City Center, and the 190-room Park Hyatt Beaver Creek Resort & Spa in Avon. Two Texas properties, the 388-room Renaissance Houston Hotel and the 375-room Omni Austin Hotel, were also part of the package, as was the 60-room Ventana Inn & Spa in Big Sur, Calif. A Texas office building, the 343,664-square-foot Austin Centre, rounded out the deal.
Crescent is also expecting to close another transaction this quarter that calls for the disposition of the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa and the Sonoma Golf Club for an aggregate $175 million. The six-property transaction and the two-property deal, accounting for a total of $620 million, will leave Crescent with a net gain of $250 million. The proceeds will be used to pay down secured debt connected to the two transactions, to address 2007 debt maturities and to pay down its revolving credit facility.
In revealing its intention nearly three months ago to focus solely on office properties, Crescent noted that the plan would include the opportunistic sale of some office properties, particularly in suburban Austin, Dallas and Phoenix and Seattle. Last month the REIT sold the 295,500-square-foot Exchange Building in Seattle for $80.6 million. All told the company expects to realize estimated gains of approximately $2 billion on a book basis.
Through its subsidiaries and joint ventures, Fort Worth, Texas-headquartered Crescent owns and manages 69 Class A office properties accounting for total of 27 million square feet in select markets across the U.S. The REIT also has investments in resort residential developments. Crescent's stock opened today at $22.34.
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