Exclusive: Channel district hotel sells for blistering price per room
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Jul 29, 2020

he Hampton Inn/Home2Suites Hotel in downtown Tampa's Channel district has sold for a blistering price per key.

The 10-story, dual-flag hotel at 1155 E. Kennedy Blvd. sold for $57.5 million or $270,000 per key, a source with knowledge of the deal told the Tampa Bay Business Journal. Hillsborough County property records recorded the sale as $40.5 million or $190,000 per key, but that figure doesn't include furniture, fixtures or the Starbucks on the ground floor, all of which were part of the transaction.

Lou Plasencia of Tampa's The Plasencia Group represented the seller, Liberty Group. The buyer was Atlanta-based Noble Investment Group.

Liberty Group, based in Tampa, developed the hotel in 2019. Development costs were pegged at $45 million when the hotel opened.

The price is just below the record $276,000 per key that Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik paid for the Tampa Marriott Water Street in 2014, though it's difficult to compare the two sales. The Marriott is a 719-key convention hotel, and Vinik isn't a traditional developer or real estate investor — he purchased the hotel as part of an assemblage that has become Water Street Tampa.

The sale and price per key are particularly meaningful in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, which decimated business and leisure travel for well over a year. The cruises that depart from Port Tampa Bay — and drive significant demand for rooms at the Hampton Inn/Home2Suites, given its proximity to the cruise terminals — have not resumed. But leisure travel has come booming back in Florida and Tampa in particular, and this sale is a glowing endorsement of the city's tourism scene.

Liberty Group is currently in the planning stages of a new luxury hotel on Harbour Island.