Brookfield Lands $136M Refi For Fort Lauderdale Hilton
Brookfield Asset Management is refinancing a Hilton-branded hotel in Fort Lauderdale with proceeds from a $220 million loan.
Coast Commercial Mortgage Trust is providing the two-year, floating-rate interest only commercial mortgage-backed securities loan to Brookfield, according to an S&P Global ratings report.
Roughly $136 million, or 62 percent of the CMBS loan, is being allocated to the Brookfield-owned Hilton Fort Lauderdale Marina at 181 Southeast 17th Street, The remainder of the loan is being applied to a Westin-branded hotel in Savannah, Georgia, the report states.
Citi Real Estate Funding and Natixis Real Estate also provided a $30 million mezzanine loan for both properties.
In 2018, Brookfield acquired the 595-key Hilton hotel from Blackstone for $170.6 million, records show. The same year, Citibank provided a $139.1 million mortgage to the Brookfield affiliate that owns the 9-acre Fort Lauderdale property, which also includes a 33-slip marina.
Brookfield, a Toronto-based global asset manager led by CEO Bruce Flatt, recently offloaded another major hotel in Broward County. In February, the firm sold the 1,000-room Diplomat Beach Resort in Hollywood to a joint venture between Honolulu-based Trinity Investments and Credit Suisse for $850 million.
In recent months, Brookfield, which has $800 billion in assets, has run into some trouble with commercial properties the company owns in other states. Brookfield is facing foreclosure proceedings in New Jersey after the firm defaulted on a $225 million loan secured by its super-regional mall Woodbridge Center. Servicers also flagged eight other malls Brookfield owns across the country for troubled debt.
In Los Angeles, Brookfield has defaulted on more than $1.1 billion in debt tied to six office buildings the firm owns, losing two of them to court-appointed receivers.
Brookfield also owns the Pembroke Lakes Mall in Pembroke Pines, which could have difficulty refinancing a $260 million interest-only CMBS loan that matures in 2025, according to a Morningstar Report from last year. A drop in the mall’s occupancy to 84 percent from 100 percent, and diminished cash flow could impact Brookfield’s ability to obtain new financing, the report stated.
