New Orleans is about to see nearly 500 hotel rooms go up for grabs, as two Renaissance-branded properties head to an online commercial real estate auction starting next Monday, March 23. The package includes the 219-room Renaissance New Orleans Arts/Warehouse District and the 275-room Renaissance New Orleans Pere Marquette in the French Quarter, together offering thousands of square feet of meeting space. Sellers and brokers are pitching both hotels as value-add plays, with potential upside tied to guestroom and public-space renovations, as reported by Biz New Orleans.
According to Biz New Orleans, the properties are listed on RealINSIGHT Marketplace, with brokerage firm JLL handling the sales process in conjunction with the platform. The listings show that bidders will need to register on the marketplace in order to participate in the online sale.
What’s for sale
The Arts/Warehouse District hotel at 700 Tchoupitoulas Street is a 219-room, roughly 168,000-square-foot property that opened in 2003 and features a rooftop pool, third-party food-and-beverage outlets, and flexible meeting space. The Pere Marquette at 817 Common Street is an 18-story, 275-room full-service hotel that opened in 2001 and includes about 8,400 square feet of event and meeting space. Those building facts and room counts are listed on commercial real estate pages for the assets, per CommercialCafe and CommercialCafe.
Starting bids and auction mechanics
Commercial listing pages show starting bids of $5 million for the Arts/Warehouse District hotel and $2 million for the Pere Marquette, and they name Lamar P. Fisher as the auctioneer. The marketing materials describe the sales as reserve auctions, meaning sellers can accept or reject bids, and note that winning bidders will be required to execute the marketplace’s non-negotiable purchase agreement. Those starting-bid figures and auction details appear on the properties’ listing pages on PropertyShark and PropertyShark.
Market backdrop
Investors looking at these deals are doing it in a national capital-markets environment defined by higher borrowing costs and tighter lending. Industry data indicates that New Orleans’ hotel performance has largely stabilized since the worst of the pandemic. In mid-February, the market posted one of the largest week-over-week gains in average daily rate and revenue per available room, helped by convention traffic and Mardi Gras demand, according to CoStar.
What buyers will watch
Potential buyers will be zeroed in on the cost of required renovations, franchise property-improvement-plan obligations under Marriott’s Renaissance flag, and how quickly they can secure financing or present proof of funds. The online auction format can speed up a sale and broaden the bidder pool, but it also favors buyers who can move fast and who see clear operational upside in a market with constrained French Quarter supply, according to listing materials and local coverage from Biz New Orleans.
