King & Grove Manhattan

By Al Barbarino

Boston-based real estate private equity firm Rockpoint Group has sold the former Hotel Lola at 30 East 30th Street to King & Grove for $116 million, city records show.

Rockpoint purchased a majority share in the hotel as part of a portfolio – that also included Manhattan’s Renaissance Hotel 57 and On The Ave Hotel – from Property Markets Group in 2006.

The firm invested $15 million for guestroom and lobby renovations, renamed it the Hotel Lola (previously Hotel Thirty Thirty) and operated it with PMG, a New York City-based real estate investment firm run by Kevin Maloney, until the building was sold, sources said.

Hotel 57 was sold for $99 million in 2008, while On The Ave fetched $191.1 million last year, sources said.

The Chetrit Group-backed hotel operator King & Grove, which has renamed the hotel at 30 East 30th Street King & Grove Manhattan, also owns boutique properties in Miami, Montauk, New York, and Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Former Morgans Hotel Group CEO Ed Scheetz and Ben Pundole, a former director of entertainment at Morgans, founded King & Grove. But Pundole resigned last month after ceding control of the company to Scheetz and Joe Chetrit, who entered into a deal in 2011 to help finance K&G’s expansion.

Rockpoint has been an active buyer and seller of hotels in Manhattan, having acquired roughly 5,000 hotel rooms over the course of the last two and a half years; hotels account for about one-third of the firm’s total business, sources said.

The firm’s recent investments in the New York area include the 1,330-key Milford Plaza Hotel on 44th and 8th Avenue; the Park Central Hotel at 55th and 7th Avenue; and the Flatotel and Alex Hotel, which were previously owned by Anglo Irish Bank and are undergoing bankruptcy proceedings.

Rockpoint is also currently under contract to acquire the 670-key Manhattan at Times Square, sources said.

Since 1995, Rockpoint has raised approximately $10 billion in capital commitments and have invested approximately $9 billion of equity in over 300 transactions, with a total capitalization of roughly $38 billion.

King & Grove nor Rockpoint were available for comment.

The new King & Grove Manhattan was originally the Martha Washington Hotel, which opened on March 2, 1903 as the first city hotel exclusively for women.

Other posts by REW Staff