Westchester Marriott sold

Seeing a “dynamic” high-end market in Westchester County, a bicoastal hotel group has teamed with an institutional private equity firm to buy the 444-room Westchester Marriott Hotel in Tarrytown from Morgan Stanley.

Northview Hotel Group, a 3-year-old company based in Westport, Conn., and San Francisco, Calif., completed the deal for the hotel at 670 White Plains Road in late June, partner and co-owner Simon Hallgarten said. Hallgarten said a reported purchase price of $65 million was “good ballpark,” while declining to disclose the exact sale price.

The sale, brokered by Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels, “was actually a very quick process,” Hallgarten said. “We”™re familiar with the product” and with the broker. “We”™re in a very similar market.”

Hallgarten said Westchester”™s regional market was comparable with that of his company”™s Bethesda Marriott Hotel in suburban Maryland. The group”™s other properties include the Renaissance M Street Hotel in Washington, D.C., and Hawks Cay Resort on Duck Key in the Florida Keys.

“We like the market,” Hallgarten said of Westchester. “It”™s a dynamic market. With the Ritz-Carlton coming in” to downtown White Plains in October, “we think it”™s going to invigorate the market.” The Westchester Mall in White Plains, with its high-end retail tenants, “is a great anchor for the market,” he said.

“We think we have one of the better properties in the market,” Hallgarten said. “We”™re well-positioned to capture that business.”

The previous owner, Morgan Stanley, spent more than $10 million in hotel renovations in the last two years. The recently completed renovations project “transformed the hotel into a best-in-class asset,” said Amelia Lim, senior vice president at Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels.  “The market responded very favorably to the opportunity to leverage the recent renovations and Westchester County”™s booming economy, as well as to acquire a highly desirable Marriott-managed asset.”

“We like Marriott,” Hallgarten said. “We like the way the hotel is laid out. It has great meeting space” of nearly 26,000 square feet.

Hallgarten said Northview plans improvements to the hotel”™s central lobby to make it “a little more gracious and make a social scene, a network gathering place.” The lobby work is expected to be completed by the end of the first quarter in 2008.

In addition, “We”™re looking at a bunch of little things” in hotel improvements, Hallgarten said. “Morgan Stanley did a great job bringing the hotel up to standard. We”™re going to continue that.”

“The transaction was very successful for our client (Morgan Stanley) and the buyer,” said Alan Tantleff, executive vice president at Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels. “There is very strong demand for hotels in suburban New York due to the strong fundamentals and the limited land for future hotel construction.”

Northview will provide asset management and construction management services for the joint venture. The Marriott management team will continue to operate the hotel in Tarrytown.

“The guests won”™t know it has a new owner,” Hallgarten said.