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A London-based private equity firm has bought a gigantic golf and hotel complex near Palm Springs, California, from Blackstone for $255M, Bisnow has learned.
Local property records show that Henderson Park has bought the La Quinta Resort & Club and PGA West from the U.S. private equity giant. Henderson Park paid $255M, according to Real Capital Analytics, and local property records show that the deal was completed with a $162M loan from Morgan Stanley.
The property is managed by Pyramid, a franchise of Hilton, the hotel company previously owned by Blackstone, and has 617 guest rooms and suites along with 98 villas on a 45-acre site. It has 190K SF of meeting space, 21 tennis courts and 41 pools. Blackstone had already sold off the scheme's nine golf courses — six at PGA West, two next to the resort and one at the nearby Citrus Club. La Quinta guests have an access agreement to play the courses.
The resort has hosted PGA Tour golf events, and a season of The Bachelorette has been filmed there. The first hotel was built on the site in 1926. Henderson Park declined to comment.
Blackstone made a relatively quick profit on its investment.
It bought the property for $171M in 2018 from GIC, the sovereign wealth fund of Singapore, in a deal that also netted it the Grand Wailea Resort Hotels & Spa in Maui and the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix.
Henderson Park has been a significant investor in European hotels over the past five years, and this deal has now taken its investment in the sector across the Atlantic.
It bought the Westin Paris-Vendôme in 2018 for €550M and is now selling it for close to €800M. Last year, it bought a portfolio of 12 Hilton hotels in the UK, and set up a new platform to manage the business.
Henderson Park was set up by former Mount Kellett executive Nick Weber in 2016, who raised $500M of equity for the new business before it even had an office while working out of his local Starbucks.
The initial commitment came from two of his previous investors, 2 Stonepoint Capital and the Kuwait Investment Authority. The company’s first fund raised $3.3B and it now has about $13B in assets under management.
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