PGIM Real Estate Provides $150M Financing for JW Marriott in Tampa

Located at 510 Water Street, the 26-story luxury hotel is a part of the Water Street development in Downtown Tampa and was completed in December 2020. It was the area’s first four-star hotel and features 519 guest rooms as well as 69,946 square feet of meeting space. When combined with the existing 727-room Marriott and soon-to-be-completed 172-room Edition Hotel, the group will be able to offer over 1,400 rooms, according to an announcement. 

“Hotels were hit hard during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but with the strong economic recovery we saw in the second half of 2021, we saw major improvements in general and an opportunity to make loans in this sector,” Melissa Farrell, head of debt originations at PGIM Real Estate, said in a prepared remark. “The JW Marriott hotel is a well-balanced investment with the multiple demand drivers of the neighborhood, the convention center, and nearby arena helping to secure broader group and transient business that allows better performance overall. The deal is indicative of our ability to invest across property types and see value in diversified drivers.”

“While we were just coming out of COVID restrictions and forecasting property performance was uncertain, the uniqueness of the overall Water Street Tampa project and synergistic benefits of all the collective components made this a unique opportunity for a new hotel mortgage investment for PGIM Real Estate,” said Tom Goodsite, managing director at PGIM Real Estate, who led the transaction on the firm’s behalf. “We were glad to have had the opportunity to work with the borrowers on their continued transformation of the Water Street.”

Officials at Strategic Property Partners did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Emily Fu can be reached at efu@commercialobserver.com.