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Starwood Capital has completed its first direct UK real estate deal since the start of the coronavirus pandemic last year, which will see it develop a £200M mixed-use scheme in Manchester.
The U.S. opportunity fund has bought the Renaissance hotel on Deansgate in the city from Urban & Civic. It teamed up with local firm Property Alliance Group and will undertake a major redevelopment of the scheme, transforming it into a new hotel plus office space, residential units and car park. It said the end value of the scheme could be £200M.
Starwood has invested in the city before, buying the city’s mixed-use Royal Exchange building for £45M before starting a redevelopment and selling it to Hines for £85M a year later. The company said the deal could be the first of many in partnership with Property Alliance.
The company has been quick out of the traps in raising capital to take advantage of opportunities thrown up by the coronavirus. As of October, it had raised $5.6B of a planned $11B opportunity fund that it began raising in the early summer.
It has only undertaken one deal in the UK in the past 12 months. It bought a 29% stake in RDI, a London-listed REIT that owns assets in the UK and Germany, at the end of July. The shares are exactly the same price as the day Starwood invested.
Last week it went public with an offer to buy CA Immo, the listed Austrian office landlord in which it already owned 30%, for $4.2B.
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