Major Hotel, Corporate Deals Hit Eden Prairie

By Camelia Bulea, Associate Editor

Eden Prairie properties have recently figured in several high-profile hospitality and corporate transactions. In the larger of the two deals, the Hyatt Place Minneapolis/Eden Prairie was part of a $110 million, eight-hotel sale by Hyatt Hotels Corp. The buyer is a new joint venture owned 60 percent by Noble Investment Group and 40 percent by Hyatt.

Other Hyatt Place-flagged hotels trading in the deal are located in Atlanta, Princeton, N.J., Fair Lawn, N.J., Fort Worth and Hurst, Texas. Also included in the portfolio are Hyatt Summerfield Suites hotels in Miami and in Waltham, Mass.

As part of the joint venture, Noble and Hyatt are eyeing an $80 million strategy to develop new Hyatt Place and Hyatt Summerfield Suites properties. In a statement July 11, Hyatt president & CEO Mark Hoplamazian cited the initiative as part of Hyatt’s strategy of expanding its footprint in the select-service hospitality market.

That transaction followed the acquisition in June of the former ADC Telecommunications campus by UnitedHealth Group Inc. Located on a 90-acre site, the property’s three-building, 450,000-square-foot complex will become the new headquarters for the company’s new Optum brands, which will serve as the umbrella for United Health’s health services affiliates.

County records indicate that the property traded for $39.5 million, according to Finance and Commerce, a Minnesota business newspaper. Move-in is scheduled to take place during the next several months, the paper reported. Elsewhere in Minnesota, UnitedHealth is adding a 350,000-square-foot building to its headquarters campus in Minnetonka and building a data center in Chaska.