The 325-room Westshore Grand hotel in Tampa has a new owner, and it's one that already controls a chunk of the surrounding skyline. Ally Capital Group has acquired the property at 4860 West Kennedy Boulevard, with plans for an extensive renovation that will run in phases through 2027 and 2028.
The deal was announced per Tampa Bay Business and Wealth, which reported that Ally Capital Group partnered with Black Diamond Capital on both the acquisition and the planned renovations. The Westshore Grand operates under Marriott's Tribute Portfolio brand and sits across from the 53-acre Westshore Plaza property, according to the same report. Built in 1984, the hotel has 14,321 square feet of meeting and event space, according to LCP Group.
Ally Capital Group has not disclosed the purchase price or the anticipated renovation budget, and the company has not announced a construction start date or identified a general contractor, the outlet's report notes. It also hasn't explained how the renovation work will affect day-to-day hotel operations. The company says it expects to share additional details about the project in the coming months, per the same account.
What's Planned for the Renovation
The scope outlined so far covers a comprehensive guestroom renovation, upgrades to the meeting and event spaces, refreshed common areas and improvements to food and beverage offerings, according to the report. Valley National Bank is serving as the acquisition lender, while Preston Reid and Michael Britvan arranged the acquisition financing for Ally on behalf of Hodges Ward Elliott, a Franklin Street company, the outlet reported.
Ally Capital Group chief executive officer Andrew Wright, who also founded the Tampa-based commercial real estate firm Franklin Street, framed the purchase as a long-term bet on the neighborhood. “The Westshore Grand has long been an important part of the Westshore community, and we’re committed to restoring its role as a place where people come together,” Wright said, according to the report.
A Growing Footprint Around Westshore
This isn't Ally's first move in the immediate area. The company already owns the neighboring Urban Centre I and II office towers, which it acquired for $123 million in 2023, according to the tbbwmag.com report — a deal separately detailed by CommercialSearch, which noted the purchase included a two-building complex totaling 548,054 square feet and an adjacent seven-story parking garage, with Valley Bank providing the financing.
Ally's dealmaking extends beyond Westshore, too. The company and Banyan Street have planned roughly $8 million in improvements to downtown Tampa's 31-story Rivergate Tower, and Ally partnered with Paradise Ventures in 2022 to acquire the Sundial shopping and dining complex in downtown St. Petersburg, pursuing a multimillion-dollar redevelopment of that property the following year, per the same tbbwmag.com report.
Westshore's Bigger Picture
The Westshore Grand purchase lands in a district that's seeing significant investment activity. Westshore has more than $5 billion in infrastructure, transportation and mixed-use investment underway and employs approximately 100,000 people, according to figures Ally Capital provided to the outlet. Just across from the hotel, the Westshore Plaza shopping mall is slated to be replaced with a mixed-use district, though no timetable for demolition or construction has been set, and each phase would require additional city review before work begins, according to a separate report from Tampa Bay Business and Wealth on that project.
Reported site size for the Westshore Plaza property differs between outlets: that redevelopment report describes it as a 53-acre site planned for as many as 1,765 residences, a 240-room hotel, about 900,000 square feet of retail and 500,000 square feet of office and medical space, while the Tampa Bay Times reported the property as 54 acres and sold for $135 million.
A Mixed Lodging Market
The acquisition also arrives amid a choppy stretch for Tampa Bay hotels. Tampa Bay's 2024 RevPAR was $124.79. Hotel transaction volume across Tampa Bay fell 53% year over year.
More recent data points to further softening. Tampa's hospitality market averaged 57.6% occupancy in the third quarter, with a $140.77 average daily rate and $81.09 RevPAR, according to Matthews Real Estate Investment Services, which also reported that Tampa Bay delivered 1,216 hotel rooms with another 867 under construction through the third quarter — part of roughly 870 rooms under construction across eight projects and an additional 2,900 rooms in final planning. By November, Tampa's hotel occupancy had fallen 21.1% year over year to 63.3%, while RevPAR dropped 27.1% to $97.57, according to CoStar, which noted Tampa posted the steepest declines in occupancy, average daily rate and RevPAR among the top 25 U.S. hotel markets that month. CoStar attributed the drop in part to the elevated displacement demand that had followed Hurricane Milton in 2024.
