Putting a price on Oakland

The Oakland Marriott has finally sold -- well, assuming the City Council approved the deal.

I reported in today's Business Times that Larry Chan's Park Lane Hotels is asking for permission to sell the property, Oakland's largest hotel, for $40.8 million.

That's just $85,000 per key, compared with about $225,000 per key for Chan's Renaissance Parc 55 in San Francisco. But, Simpsons aside, Oakland has never been the tourist mecca that San Francisco has.

Buyer is CIM Group. I had reported previously that Chan was in the process of selling to Rockpoint Group and a group of private investors out of Hong Kong. Even at that point there were rumors the new buyers would quickly seek to flip to other buyers. I still don't know what happened to the deal.

Interesting sidenote: the City of Oakland has close to $20 million in capitalized debt on the hotel, which it bailed out in the mid-80s. Becase their are more senior debtors and because the overall sales price is too low, the city would only collect about $5 million on the sale.

I'll put a link here next week.