MCR Buys 2 Salt Lake City Marriott Hotels

By Keith Loria, Contributing Editor

Courtyard by Marriott Lehi

MCR has acquired two Marriott hotels, the 97-key Marriott Courtyard Lehi and the 94-key Marriott SpringHill Suites Lehi, both located in the Salt Lake City suburb of Lehi, Utah, for $27.5 million.

“We specialize in purchasing limited-service Hilton and Marriott properties so these two hotels were right down the pipe for us,” Russ Shattan, MCR’s senior vice president of acquisitions and development, told Commercial Property Executive. “A 3-year-old Marriott Courtyard and a 6-year-old Marriott SpringHill Suites, both in a great location. They are beautiful assets, well built and one of the best brands in the business.”

Both hotels are located at the entrance to Thanksgiving Point, known as Salt Lake City’s Silicon Slopes technology corridor, which also includes museums and numerous entertainment facilities.

“It has some of the biggest names in tech as part of it,” Shattan said. “Adobe has a giant office park and are currently in the process of spending $200 million in expanding.”

Other companies such as Microsoft, Oracle and Ancestry.com all call the area home.

Booming tech sector drives growth

Recent data by MCR shows that the city of Lehi has more than doubled in size since the turn of the new century, boosted by the large cluster of technology companies, with year-over year growth reaching 4.6 percent in 2016.

“The area is benefitting from the high cost of living in California and we’ve seen a migration from East from California into areas like Reno, Nev., Phoenix, Ariz., and quite a bit into Salt Lake,” Shattan said. “It has a very steady political environment, a highly educated workforce and a pro-business economic outlook.”

Situated between Provo and Salt Lake City, Lehi is also home to major government facilities, including the NSA’s 1.5 million-square-foot Utah Data Center.

Renovation plans far ahead

The Marriott SpringHill Suites recently went through a renovation and MCR is planning to make upgrades to the Marriott Courtyard Lehi in four years, on its seventh birthday.

Earlier this month, MCR opened the $21 million Residence Inn by Marriott Fort Lauderdale Pompano Beach Central, a 112-key hotel in Pompano Beach, Fla. 

There’s been a lot of activity in the Salt Lake City hotel market in 2017. In August, Marcus & Millichap arranged the sale of a four-story, 86-key SpringHill Suites hotel in downtown Salt Lake City, and earlier this summer,  ASAP International Holdings arranged the acquisition of the DoubleTree by Hilton Salt Lake City Airport hotel in Salt Lake City. 

Image courtesy of MCR