Standard High Line hitting the market

JLL tapped to handle sale of 338-key hotel, which last traded for $400M in 2014

The Standard Hotel on the High Line and Andre Balazs (Credit: the Standard and Getty Images)
The Standard Hotel on the High Line and Andre Balazs (Credit: the Standard and Getty Images)

Standard International is putting the trendy, 338-room Standard High Line up for sale after paying $400 million three years ago, sources told The Real Deal.

The hotel management company, which hotelier Andre Balazs founded and then stepped down from in March, recently hired JLL to market the 18-story property at 848 Washington Street in the Meatpacking District, sources said.

Sources said the hotel has been quietly on and off the market for the past few years.

The four-star, 219,000-square-foot hotel opened its doors in 2009. Balazs had developed the hotel in partnership with Dune Real Estate Partners and Greenfield Partners, which invested about $240 million in the property and then sold their stakes to Standard International in 2014 for $400 million, or $1.2 million per key. Balazs and partners are the owners of Standard International, which runs the five-property Standard hotel chain.

Estimating the hotel’s present value on a per-key basis is difficult, sources said, given its large food-and-beverage component, including the Standard Grill, Le Bain, Top of the Standard and the Standard Biergarten.

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Balazs had sold 80 percent of his stake in Standard International in 2013, but he continues to own 20 percent despite stepping down as chair earlier this year.

Of the other four Standard hotels, one is in the East Village, one is in Miami Beach, and two are in Los Angeles. The Standard High Line had marked Balazs’ first ground-up hotel project. Its alternate addresses are 41-49 Little West 12th Street, 444 West 13th Street and 848-856 Washington Street.

A JLL hotels and hospitality group led by Jeffrey Davis and Gilda Perez-Alvarado is marketing the property. They declined to comment, and a spokesperson for Standard International could not be immediately reached.

The city’s hotel industry has been struggling to stay afloat amid inventory oversupply, Airbnb and the citywide market slowdown. RevPar, or revenue per available room, fell in the first quarter to its lowest level since 2014 – 2.3 percent year-over-year, STR data shows.

Some hotels have had success with selling when marketed as development or conversion opportunities. The LeFrak Organization is set to close this summer on the roughly $120 million purchase of the 37-story, Affinia-branded Dumont NYC hotel in Kips Bay, where the firm is planning a residential conversion.