Newport Beach Marriott Trades for $216M

Newport Beach Marriott Hotel & Spa. Image courtesy of Werner Segarra Photography

Eagle Four Partners LLC and Lyon Living have acquired the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel & Spa in Newport, Beach, Calif., in an off-market transaction. Host Hotels & Resorts reported in an SEC document that it sold the 532-key coastal asset to the joint venture for $216 million, including $14 million for the FF&E replacement funds.

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“It was an opportunity that we had to seize given the current environment,” Kory Kramer, a partner with Eagle Four Partners LLC, told Commercial Property Executive of the pandemic-era purchase of the Newport Beach Marriott. Eagle Four relied on the CBRE Hotels team of Bob Webster and Michael DiPrima, with whom the company has a years-long relationship, to facilitate the transaction with Host, which also utilized the CBRE Hotels team’s advisory services.

Located on 10 acres at 900 Newport Center Drive, the Newport Beach Marriott offers such amenities as roughly 40,000 square feet of premier indoor and outdoor event space and a location just across from the 1.3 million-square-foot Fashion Island luxury shopping destination. The 16-story hotel welcomed its first guests in 1975 and has since maintained its luster through a series of renovations, including an approximately $70 million upgrade in 2005 that produced 20 additional suites and the 14,000-square-foot Pure Blu spa.

Eagle Four and Lyon Living have their own plan for the Newport Beach Marriott, a project Kramer described as a “transformative renovation and repositioning of this beautiful property.” The owners expect to commence the renovation in 2021, with the goal of further elevating the status of the hotel in an effort to appeal to higher-rated business and leisure guests, as well as the local coastal luxury market’s meetings and events crowd.  

Preparing for a rebound

Eagle Four and Lyon Living are not alone in their assumption that the recovery of the hotel sector—including convention and group travel demand—will occur in the not-too-distant future. According to an October report by CBRE Hotels, “Given the short-term nature of travel restrictions and relatively strong economic recovery we’re predicting, we expect a quicker and stronger bounce back from this recession than the lodging industry experienced following the Global Financial Crisis, with occupancy reaching pre-COVID-19 levels in 2023.”