CBRE has brokered the sale of the Renaissance Aruba Resort & Casino and the Renaissance Curaçao Resort Casino in Aruba and Curaçao. New York-based private equity real estate firm DLJ Real Estate Capital, which has offices in Los Angeles and Hong Kong, has disposed the assets to an affiliate of Alabama-based gaming and hospitality enterprise Wind Creek Hospitality.
The Renaissance Aruba Resort & Casino has 556 guestrooms and two casinos in the capital of Aruba. Meanwhile, the Renaissance Curaçao Resort & Casino has 237 guestrooms and a 23,000 square-foot casino. The property is on the waterfront at Willemstad and connected to the Rif Fort, a 19th-century UNESCO World Heritage site.
The CBRE Hotels team of Christian Charre, SVP, Paul Weimer, VP, and Bradley Burwell, VP, Andy Wimsatt, MD, and Mark Owens, EVP, represented the seller in the deal. The buyer, Wind Creek Hospitality, is the principal gaming and hospitality enterprise of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, Alabama’s only federally recognized tribal entity. “This was a large and complex transaction, since both properties included several operating components in addition to hospitality. This required us to find a non-traditional buyer who was comfortable with gaming, retail, timeshare and hospitality, and able to close in two foreign jurisdictions," Weimer told Commercial Property Executive.
CBRE Hotels finalized the sale of the majority interest in a 369-guestkey resort in Panama City’s Punta Pacifica in early 2017. In a $2.4-million deal, Newland International Properties disposed of the stake to Ithaca Capital Investments.