MPG sells Westin Pasadena hotel for $92 million
The Westin Pasadena hotel has been sold to HEI Hotels & Resorts for $92 million by MPG Office Trust Inc. — a sign of the improving health of the hotel business.
MPG, the largest office landlord in downtown Los Angeles, has been selling noncore assets in an effort to reduce debt. Its other properties are primarily office buildings in Los Angeles and Orange counties.
Maguire Thomas Partners, a predecessor of MPG, built the 350-room hotel in 1989 as part of its Plaza Las Fuentes office and hotel complex on North Los Robles Avenue near Pasadena City Hall.
Investors such as real estate investment trusts are hungry for full-service hotels in popular California destinations including Los Angeles County, said consultant Alan Reay of Atlas Hospitality Group. The 12-story Westin Pasadena is the kind of upscale inn now in demand by investors, who are driving prices of choice properties back up to levels last seen in 2007, he said.
“The hotel market is rebounding off the bottom” of early 2010, Reay said.
MPG used $79 million from the hotel sale to repay the mortgage loan secured by the hotel and adjacent Plaza Las Fuentes office building, which is now unencumbered, the company said. The remaining $13 million is available to the company as unrestricted cash.
Connecticut-based HEI owns 40 hotels. Its California properties include the W Hollywood, Hilton Long Beach and Fullerton Marriott.
