Tampa Renaissance Hotel trades for $68 million

Following through on a strategy to prune its portfolio and focus on high-end and luxury hotels, Braemar Hotels & Resorts Inc. has sold the Renaissance Tampa International Plaza Hotel for $68 million.

A partnership between Clearview Hotel Capital of Newport Beach, Calif., and Oaktree Capital Management L.P. bought the 293-room hotel in late May.

The AAA Four Diamond property, which generates among the highest revenue per available room — a key industry metric — of any hotel in the Tampa area, was completed in 2004.

The Plasencia Group CEO Lou Plasencia, together with firm vice presidents Joe Corcoran, Chris Plasencia and Nick Plasencia, represented Dallas-based Braemar in the sale of the 4200 Jim Walter Blvd. hotel property.

Corcoran called the Renaissance’s Westshore Business District location a “high barrier-to-entry location, while Nick Plasencia says Clearview and Oaktree purchased the hotel at an “ideal time,” citing waxing tourism figures in Hillsborough County and throughout Florida.

Since its formation in 1993, Plasencia Group has consulted on, or sold, more than 100 area lodging properties, according to information supplied by the firm.

Clearview has acquired hotels containing more than 10,000 rooms and valued in excess of $1.5 billion since its founding in 2007. The Renaissance purchase marks its first major acquisition in the Tampa Bay area.

Oaktree Capital is no stranger to major commercial real estate investments in Tampa, however. In late 2015, it teamed with Banyan Street Capital to buy the 42-story Bank of America plaza skyscraper downtown for $193.5 million, which remains the largest amount ever invested in the city for a single asset.

Earlier that year, it sold the 323-room InterContinental Tampa Hotel, also in Westshore, for $40.2 million, records show.

In all, the Los Angeles-based Oaktree had more than $121 billion in assets under management in March, according to the company’s website.

For its part, Braemar signaled earlier this year that it planned to focus on acquiring higher-end hotels and shed properties that were not a part of that niche.

In April, it bought the 266-room Ritz-Carlton Sarasota resort, together with an affiliated private club on Lido Beach, a golf course and clubhouse in Lakewood Ranch and other assets, for $172.3 million.