Starwood Buys Standard Hotel in Miami Beach for $62M
By Julia Echikson January 5, 2022 7:01 pm
reprintsStarwood (STWD) Capital Group swapped a mall for a hotel in Miami.
The real estate behemoth, led by billionaire Barry Sternlicht, bought the Standard Hotel in Miami Beach for $62 million, according to property records.
Located on Belle Isle at 40 Island Avenue, the three-story establishment holds 100 rooms, which cost more than $300 a night in the midst of the high season.
The deal equates to $620,000 per room. Sternlicht’s family office, Jaws Estates Capital, loaned $49.6 million for the acquisition, per records.
The seller purchased the 83,978-square-foot property for $34 million in April 2008, only months before the financial meltdown, per records. The entity is tied to Sandra Ortega Mera and Marcos Ortega Mera, the children of Spanish billionaire and Zara founder Amancio Ortega, according to The Real Deal, which first reported the deal.
The Ortega family are prominent Miami real estate investors. The Ortega patriarch purchased an entire block along Lincoln Road for $370 million in 2015, which at the time was the second-largest real estate deal in Miami-Dade County’s history, per the Miami Herald.
The following year, he topped himself by buying Downtown Miami’s Southeast Financial Center office tower for $517 million.
It’s a busy week for Starwood in Miami. The Standard hotel deal comes only a day after the investment firm sold a Hialeah mall for $149 million as the firm seeks to unload most of its shopping centers investments. Late last month, the firm also opened its newly constructed headquarters in Miami Beach.
Unrelated to Starwood, a Standard-branded condominium is coming to Midtown Miami, developed by Carlos Rosso, former president of the Related Group’s condo division.
Julia Echikson can be reached at jechikson@commercialobserver.com.