This Week's Atlanta Deal Sheet
A prolific Atlanta apartment developer is beefing up its hotel portfolio with a prominent Downtown Atlanta purchase.
The RADCO Cos. bought The American Hotel, a 315-room, Hilton Doubletree full-service hotel from Legacy Ventures for $68.1M, RADCO CEO Norman Radow told Bisnow. Atlanta-based Legacy — which owns the Hilton Garden Inn, the Hotel Indigo and the Embassy Suites Centennial Olympic Park in Downtown Atlanta — will continue to operate the hotel at 160 Ted Turner Drive for RADCO, according to a press release.
RADCO plans to rebrand the asset as part of Hilton's Tapestry Collection, with the effort of boosting the hotel's performance through additional capital expenditures of $8M, Radow said.
“RADCO projects that the hospitality market will experience a significant recovery in the short term and that the Downtown core of Atlanta will continue to be a robust attraction for many years to come,” Radow said in a press release.
Developed in 1962 as Atlanta's first racially integrated hotel, The American Hotel was purchased by Legacy in 2015 for $42M when it was then branded as a DoubleTree. Legacy spent $16M in renovations and rebranded it as The American Hotel.
This is RADCO's third hotel purchase since launching its hospitality investment division last year. It already bought the DoubleTree by Hilton in Roswell and the DoubleTree by Hilton in Alpharetta. RADCO plans to spend $100M on new hotel deals over the next year, Radow previously told Bisnow.
SALES
Faropoint Ventures purchased a FedEx Ship Center, a 37,500 SF facility on a 3.55-acre site at 401 Windsor St. in Atlanta, from Linkpoint Properties for $7M. Linkpoint, which focuses on acquiring single-tenant real estate assets in the Southeast, acquired the property in 2017 for nearly $3M, according to a press release.
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R. James Properties purchased two apartment projects in Atlanta from Crown Bay Group — Southlake Cove in Jonesboro and Vineyard Pointe in Riverdale — for almost $36M combined. Both properties are described as workforce housing communities.
“When we purchased these properties in 2019, we were able to see the upside and potential value-add within these communities,” Crown Bay founder Steve Firestone said in a statement. “Over the past two-plus years, we were strategic in the improvements made, both from a cosmetic and management standpoint. The fact that we were able to sell them for significant profit that well-exceeds our proforma in less than three years demonstrates the value of forced appreciation, not to mention the historical stability of this asset.”
Crown Bay purchased the 35-year-old, 346-unit Southlake Cove property in 2019 for $18.3M and sold it fully occupied. It bought Vineyard Pointe, which was built in 1989 and contains 108 units, in 2019 for $5.7M and sold it for $8.5M, according to the release.
“Properties such as Southlake Cove and Vineyard Pointe are popular among the workforce employee base,” Firestone said. “Minimal tenant turnover and delinquency typically make for a stable, steady cash flow. For this reason, this historically stable, recession-proof product will continue to be an attractive avenue for investors to diversify their portfolios, particularly during uncertain economic times.”
PERSONNEL
Scotland Wright Associates is expanding its industrial practice with a new partner. The firm hired Will Grogan as a partner for its industrial practice, pairing him with Scott O'Halloran. Grogan, with 16 years of experience, comes to Scotland Wright from Lavista Associates; he was a recipient of an Atlanta Commercial Board of Realtors' Phoenix Award in 2021. Scotland Wright closed more than $140M in industrial deals last year.
“We could not invent a better fit for SWA — professionally or culturally — as we continue to make our service platform bigger and better for the clients we’re privileged to serve,” said Scotland Wright, the founding partner of the firm.
PLANS
Rivian, as it aims to start construction this summer on a $5B electric vehicle assembly complex an hour east of Downtown Atlanta, is taking on a much smaller project inside the Perimeter. It has filed alteration permits with the city of Atlanta to turn the 27K SF warehouse at 2333 Defoor Hills Road into a storage facility at an estimated build-out cost of $182K.
DEVELOPMENT
Mill Creek Residential is moving forward on preparing a Midtown site for a 31-story apartment tower. The developer obtained land development permits with the city of Atlanta for its planned Modera Parkside project at 180 10th St. Mill Creek plans to start installing underground utilities, grading, paving and erosion control on the nearly 1-acre site, according to the permit. The site is on the corner of 10th Street and Piedmont Avenue, near Piedmont Park and a mile from Tech Square in Midtown. Mill Creek plans to develop a 345-unit property, according to What Now Atlanta.
