Westbrook Paying Linchris $74M for Brookline Holiday Inn Via Newmark

By Joe Clements

BROOKLINE—An infill hotel property perched just outside Kenmore Square is trading to Westbrook Partners for an impressive $325,000 per key, or approximately $74 million, more than double the $35.5 million its current owner paid for the 228-room Holiday Inn at 1200 Beacon St. in Nov. 2007. Newmark is orchestrating the sale on behalf of Linchris Hotels, a homegrown hotel management company headquartered in Hanover.

“That is about to close,” Newmark Executive Managing Director Michael Byrne confirms to therealreporter.com regarding indications from market observers that such an exchange is in the offing, completing a process that took over a year for the Newmark team to conclude due to mitigating factors including municipal inquiries regarding potential development prospects among the suitors. Joining Byrne on the exclusve listing along with Newmark US Head of Investments Robert E. Griffin Jr. are Associate Director Thomas Greeley and Associate Casey Griffin.

One timetable offered has the trade being finalized as early as this week, with Westbrook already committing to the six-story, 135,000-sf structure that dates to 1960. For the time being, it appears the status quo will remain with the facility as a Holiday Inn, but Byrne says a reflagging is among the potential changes that could occur over the next year. If so, that would end a lengthy stretch for that property under the Holiday Inn brand.

Byrne leads the Newmark multifamily practice group that includes Greeley and Casey Griffin which has been involved in a number of hospitality related assignments, the 46-unit John Jeffries House among the more recent instances. That boutique hotel on Beacon Hill yielded a tidy $25 million for owner Mass Eye & Ear when Related Beal was identified as the winning suitor after Newmark had previously brokered a sale of the adjacent garage to that same investor.

Westbrook is tapping into a consortium of lenders to finance 1200 Beacon St. in an arrangement where Brookline Bank is taking the lead. Although he confirms the Newmark debt and structured finance group of David Douvadjian and Brian Butler arranged that mortgage, Byrne could not discuss specifics of that loan, including LTV and other terms.

Attractions for investors as a hotel property include 1200 Beacon St. being right on public transportation connecting to downtown Boston, one of several reasons corporate and leisure travelers contribute to the room traffic, and the asset is barely a Big Papi game-winner away from Fenway Park, helping fill in what can be a thin summer season for academic and business travel which the Holiday Inn also benefits from thanks to being also a short distance from the Longwood Medical Area and several colleges, Boston University and a cluster of Fenway schools especially accessible to the hotel. “They get a ton of activity from the Longwood Medical Area,” relays Byrne, that constituency including both medical professionals as well as patients.

Based in New York City with an office in Boston, Westbrook Partners is a privately owned real estate investment management firm which counts hotels among a range of asset classes it focuses on, others being industrial, multifamily, office and retail. Capital sources include endowments, financial institutions, foundations and both private and public pension funds. The investment portfolio is estimated at $20 billion, including multiple assets in metropolitan Boston. Earlier this year, Westbrook acquired four Boston office buildings from Synergy Investments for an aggregate $90 million, and the investor just completed raising $2.8 billion for its 10th opportunistic fund.

A family owned firm founded by Christopher Gistis, Linchris Hotels celebrated 30 years in business last year, with operations today throughout New England and also into the mid-Atlantic and southern US, including Florida, Georgia and Texas.