Downtown Tampa hotel buyer gets $29.6 million in financing

The new owners of the Aloft Tampa Downtown Hotel have gotten $29.6 million in acquisition financing to buy the property.

According to the JLL Hotel & Hospitality Group, it arranged a floating rate term loan for Newbond Holdings to purchase and renovate the 130-room hotel at 100 W. Kennedy Blvd. The lender was the CIM Group.

Newbond, a New York hotel investment firm, announced Sept. 6 that it was buying the property along Tampa’s Riverwalk. It did not disclose the sales price and Hillsborough County property records have not been updated. JLL did not immediately respond to a question about whether the loan covered the full sale price or a percentage of it.

Property records show Aloft’s previous owner, Charlotte, North Carolina-based Pharos Hospitality, paid $27.2 million for the hotel in 2015. The hotel, which was once the Mercantile Bank office building, first opened in 2014 after a $20 million renovation.

The hotel which sits right at the eastbound entrance to downtown Tampa has a waterfront pool, event spaces and a bar and lounge. Newbond says it plans a major renovation that will include guestrooms, public areas and the pool deck.

The Aloft is the third hotel Newbond has bought in the city in recent years. The other two properties are the Sheraton Tampa Riverwalk, which it bought for $45 million in October 2022 and renamed Hotel Tampa Riverwalk, and the Westin Tampa Waterside on Harbour Island which it bought for $67.5 million in 2021.

In the statement announcing the purchase, Aloft cites “our conviction in the long-term Tampa growth story” as one of the reasons it is investing heavily in the market.

Kevin Davis, CEO of JLL’s Hotels & Hospitality Group Americas, says in his company’s statement that the financing is an “endorsement of the Tampa hospitality market.”

He says between 2019 and the first quarter of this year, the city’s revenue per available room is among the top three of U.S. lodging markets. “Strong population growth, corporate migration, significant development activity and the return of leisure and group travel have all” contributed to that, Davis says.