Two years ago, a major hotel operator abandoned its multibillion-dollar investment in San Francisco, leaving two hotels to languish without ownership.
Now, three New York-based firms are stepping in to buy the properties.
Newbond Holdings, the Witkoff Group, and Conversant Capital are partnering on the purchase of the Parc 55 and Hilton Union Square, according to a court document reviewed by The Standard.
The sale requires still court approval since it has been overseen by a court-appointed receiver who took over management of the hotels, which have a total of nearly 3,000 rooms, after previous owner Park Hotels & Resorts defaulted on its loans in 2023.
Park Hotels, a Virginia-based real estate investment trust, purchased the Hilton in 2000 and Parc 55 in 2015. A year later, Park Hotels took out a $725 million loan to pay for planned renovations.
According to court filings, the receiver selected a preferred buyer in March but had to delay the closing of the sale four times because of the properties’ large size and the complexity of the deal.
Newbond, Witkoff, and Conversant Capital did not respond to requests for comment.
Both hotels are managed by Hilton past 2040, with options to extend the contract for decades more.
The sale price is not known, but a July bondholder report said the purchase was contingent on a buyer modifying, extending, and assuming the distressed $725 million commercial mortgage-backed securities loan.
The loan terms also require the buyers to put up funds to alleviate the hotels’ cash flow challenges and pay for renovations to increase their value.
In 2016, the two hotels had an appraised value of $1.56 billion. The bondholder report recently appraised their combined value at $450 million to $500 million.
Newbond Holdings is a hospitality-centric real estate firm that has invested more than $20 billion in the Westin Tampa Waterside, Renaissance Times Square, and Hotel Tampa Riverwalk, among other assets.
The Witkoff Group, founded by Steven Witkoff in 1997, is a major Manhattan developer with a history of acquiring trophy real estate. Witkoff, a longtime friend of President Donald Trump, was appointed this year as U.S. special envoy to the Middle East.
Conversant Capital is an investment firm founded in 2020 that provides “flexible capital solutions” for “non-traditional and institutionalizing asset classes as well as real estate special situations.”
The San Francisco Chronicle was first to report the identity of the buyers.