Lightstone Secures Construction Loan for FL Moxy Hotel

By Scott Baltic

Moxy South Beach

Investor/developer Lightstone has closed $73 million in financing for the latest hotel project, the seven-story, 202-key Moxy South Beach, in Miami Beach, Fla. Canyon Partners Real Estate and CapitalSource, a division of Pacific Western Bank, provided the loan.

The financing package comprises a $55 million senior loan from CapitalSource and an $18 million preferred equity investment from Canyon. This marks Canyon’s fifth investment with CapitalSource and second with Lightstone.

The property, located at 915 Washington Ave., will be the first Moxy-branded hotel in Florida. The site is two blocks from the beach on Ocean Drive and close to South Beach’s restaurants, nightlife and shopping venues on Washington and Collins avenues.

Moxy is an urban lifestyle brand by Marriott featuring large, active public spaces and “well-designed, efficient guest rooms,” and seeks to combine affordability with style and comfort. “The Moxy brand is playful, vibrant and chic and aligns perfectly with the attitude of South Beach and the travelers it attracts,” Lightstone President Mitchell Hochberg said in a prepared statement.

The lobby of the 78,000-square-foot Moxy South Beach will feature an outdoor courtyard that connects a restaurant, an all-day bar, a Cuban-themed bodega offering stylish beach accessories and a co-working lounge that transitions into meeting studios. The second floor will feature a 72-foot pool, fitness center and outdoor bar. The rooftop space will offer a large shallow pool.

Lightstone’s hotel development portfolio includes Moxy’s 612-room flagship property in Times Square, which opened last year, and will add the Moxy Chelsea in New York this February. Lightstone is also developing Moxy hotels in downtown Los Angeles and in New York’s East Village and Lower East Side.

Climbing back up

South Florida is in the early phase of a new upward cycle, with nation-leading RevPAR growth in 2018, according to a report from HFF. RevPAR had last peaked in February 2015, at $227.27, after which the market hit a downturn, caused by a fall in international demand, a glut of new product, the convention center in Miami Beach closing for a $620 million renovation and expansion, and the emergence of the Zika virus.

Mid-2016 till early 2017 was mostly brutal, but in August 2017 things started to turn around, and except for Hurricane Irma in September 2017, RevPAR growth has been in double-digit since then.

Image courtesy of Lightstone