JRK Buys Torrey Pines-Adjacent Hotel for $165M
JRK Property Holdings acquired the complex via its $350M Hospitality Fund.
By Nick Trombola July 18, 2024 2:20 pm
reprints
While San Diego’s Torrey Pines Golf Course may not host the U.S. Open Championship golf tournament again for the foreseeable future, a luxury hotel adjacent to the course will host a new owner.
Los Angeles-based JRK Property Holdings has gotten its hands on the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines for $165 million, in one of the largest single-asset deals in California this year. The seller was Braemar Hotels & Resorts, represented in the deal by Eastdil Secured. JRK acquired the hotel using capital from its $350 million Hospitality Fund.
The 394-key hotel is on about 11.4 acres at 10950 North Torrey Pines Road in La Jolla, Calif., about 15 miles north of Downtown San Diego, adjacent to the famed course’s 18th hole. The Torrey Pines golf course has hosted the U.S. Open twice, in 2008 and 2021.
“This was a rare opportunity to acquire a generational California oceanfront location with growing leisure demand, potentially negative supply, and in one of the strongest and most coveted life sciences corridors in the country,” Shaan Bhatia, head of hotel investment for JRK, said in a statement. “The property generates significant cash flow with a large rate gap to higher-end resorts in the market.”
Bhatia said that JRK will invest “significant capital” toward improving guest experiences at the hotel, though additional details on the planned updates were not immediately available.
Braemar acquired the hotel from Ashford Hospitality Trust in 2013 as part of an eight-property portfolio, though the price was undisclosed, according to data from CoStar. The hotel was last sold as an individual asset in 2003 for $106.5 million.
The sale of the hotel reflects Braemar’s “commitment to reduce the company’s dividend and interest expense, enhance our capital structure and financial flexibility, as well as create value for our shareholders,” Braemar CEO Richard Stockton said in a statement in May.
In terms of all commercial asset sales in Southern California, Braemar’s price for the hotel comes in just behind the $167 million GID Real Estate Investments recently spent on Millennium PQ, a 331-unit trophy multifamily complex in San Diego’s Rancho Penasquitos neighborhood. Walker & Dunlop, which brokered that sale, claims it as the second-largest deal for a single asset in California so far this year. That makes the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines sale not far behind on the list.
Nick Trombola can be reached at NTrombola@commercialobserver.com.
