DFW: Behind the Statler-Hilton Deal

A cold call to Ricchi Dallas Investments CEO Leobardo Trevino landed Henry S. Miller Brokerage multifamily associates Darden Orand, Andrew Doster, and EVP Lew Wood with the listing with Dallas' historic Statler-Hilton last summer. (No word on whether anyone wants to buy Statler and Waldorf, the two old balcony guys from the Muppets.) Now, a year later, the vacant 600k SF, 20-story hotel (built in '56 as a 1,000-room Hilton) and the old 131k SF public library (built in '55) have been sold for rebirth as a mixed-use hotel with 200 residential units, parking, and retail by 2017. Within the next six months, the buyer is going to demolish the building interiors down to the concrete floors and walls and do the environmental remediation. (For anyone who's ever played with Legos, you know that's the fun part.)

After landing the assignment, there was never a price tag attached to the sale. “We put it out to a select group of about 10 investors because we knew how complicated it would be,” Lew says. Every group contacted made an offer, Andrew adds. All were substantial players, with Centurion American Development Group having the strongest final offer. (The amount was undisclosed). All of that was done by last August and the deal just closed late last month. It was at the title company for 10 months because a number of things had to happen before the buyer would pull the trigger, Lew says. The single biggest issue: getting the TIF funding ($46M from the City of Dallas) approved. There were also the historical aspects, federal historical credits, state historical credits, and so forth.