The real estate bank and its joint venture partners, Three Wall Capital and MCR, listed the 725-key hotel and had a price in mind of around $275 million. The real deal has learned. The property is marketed by Eastdil Secured.
The hotel was opened in 1929 and was given monument status in 2016. It has a storied past, hosting Hollywood icons Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio during the couple’s brief marriage in the 1950s.
Once part of a bustling “hotel row” that stretched along Lexington Avenue from approximately 52nd to 45th Street, the corridor has seen hotel supply shrink dramatically over the past decade. The former Midtown DoubleTree and Marriott East Side have been repurposed as student housing and the Midtown East Maxwell hotel closed in 2020.
Elsewhere in Midtown, the iconic Waldorf Astoria has shrunk from 1,400 to 375 rooms and the Roosevelt Hotel will likely be sold and redeveloped as an office tower.
The Lexington is the last major “big box” hotel in the area, giving potential owners a chance to draw traffic to surrounding office towers, such as the recently opened JP Morgan Chase headquarters a block to the west.
The property last changed hands in 2021, when the joint venture acquired it for $185 million. The hotel had been closed since the pandemic and renovated by its previous owner, DiamondRock Hospitality. Shortly afterwards, it reopened under the Marriott International Autograph Collection brand.
The hotel comes to market as New York’s occupancy rates approach pre-pandemic levels and the city’s luxury hotel market is surging due to a rebound in tourism and business travel.
Average occupancy rates exceeded 84 percent per week in 2024, up from a pandemic low of about 50 percent, according to a report from Lodging Analytics Research & Consulting. But expenses related to labor costs, high interest rates and property taxes continue to impact the bottom line.
Eastdil Secured declined to comment.
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