A Florida-based hotel investor whose chief executive was one of President Donald Trump’s biggest financial backers during the election cycle has made its second big purchase in the city of Orange.
An affiliate of West Palm Beach-based Ecclestone Organization, which also develops real estate, recently closed on the purchase of the Embassy Suites by Hilton Anaheim-Orange, a 230-room hotel just east of the Santa Ana (I-5) Freeway at 400 N. State College Blvd.
The three-diamond hotel sold for about $42.4 million, or $184,000 per room. A real estate affiliate of Goldman Sachs paid a reported $48.4 million for the property just two years ago.
Despite the dip in price, the recent transaction is OC’s second priciest hotel sale of the year, according to CoStar Group Inc. records. The estimated $125 million sale of the Fairmont Newport Beach, now known as the Duke Hotel, is the top sale so far.
Ecclestone Organization took out a $33 million loan with Citi Real Estate Funding Inc. in New York to finance the Embassy Suites purchase, property records show.
The hotel is a few blocks from Angel Stadium in the Platinum Triangle area. It previously operated as a Hilton Suites but underwent a multimillion-dollar renovation and became an Embassy Suites before Goldman Sachs’ purchase.
The 10-story extended-stay hotel offers two-room suites with nightly room rates of $180 to $300, according to its website.
The deal is the first known OC purchase for privately held Ecclestone in about seven years after its purchase of Orange’s DoubleTree Hotel, a 19-story property next to the Outlets at Orange shopping center that’s the county’s 15th largest hotel by room count.
Ecclestone bought a 70% stake in the DoubleTree and six other hotels outside the area in 2007 as part of a portfolio deal. Three years later, it bought the remaining 30% stake in the DoubleTree Hotel. Terms of the two transactions weren’t disclosed.
Ecclestone is headed by E. Llwyd Ecclestone, a wealthy real estate developer and investor who built the PGA National golf community in Palm Beach Gardens in 1976. The site has five golf courses, shops, and the headquarters of PGA of America. He sold the golf property in 2006 for a reported $180 million and bought a handful of hotels in the following few years, including the DoubleTree Hotel in Orange.
His other recent investments include hotels in Houston, Nashville, and Overland Park, Kansas.
Media outlets in south Florida refer to Ecclestone as a “developer, power broker and political donor,” who along with his wife, Diana, was one of Trump’s biggest donors during the presidential race.
The couple gave over $300,000 in hard-money contributions and pledged about $1.1 million to Republican-focused joint fundraising committees last year, according to OpenSecrets.org.
They were also among the 14 initial “Presidential Trustees” named to Trump’s fundraising campaign.
