Endeavor Pays $68M for 7 Midway Hotels, Half What RLJ Paid in 2006

Endeavor Hotels, based in suburban Oakbrook Terrace, has closed its purchase of a seven-hotel cluster near Midway International Airport for $68 million, buying the portfolio from Bethesda, Maryland-based real estate investment trust RLJ Lodging Trust, according to Hoodline, citing The Real Deal. That price works out to about 51% less than the roughly $139 million RLJ spent acquiring the same properties back in 2006. To close the deal, Endeavor principal Vishal Thakkar lined up a $90 million mortgage from Atlanta-based hospitality lender Access Point Financial, a loan larger than the purchase price itself.

All seven properties sit within a single six-block run of South Cicero Avenue, numbered roughly 6500 through 6650, plus a TGI Friday’s restaurant parcel folded into the same sale. Room counts run from 104 at the smallest, a Holiday Inn Express & Suites, up to 200 at the anchor Chicago Marriott Midway, with a Hilton Garden Inn, a Hampton Inn, a Fairfield Inn & Suites, a Courtyard and a Sleep Inn filling out the remaining 683 rooms between them for the 1,057-room total. The Weglarz family originally built the cluster before selling it to RLJ in 2006; the same family later assembled a separate parcel in the south suburbs for the Wind Creek Casino and sold that land to an affiliate of the casino’s developer for $25 million in 2022.

It is the latest in a run of steeply discounted Chicago hotel trades this year. Manga Hotel Group, out of Toronto, picked up the former Royal Sonesta Chicago River North for $21 million, and Vinayaka Hospitality’s Ketu Amin has been on a buying spree of his own: $25 million for the 520-room former W Hotel on North Lake Shore Drive, a property that fetched $126 million back in 2012, plus the Westin Michigan Avenue for $72 million versus its $156 million price tag in 2018.

Why it matters

A hospitality lender writing a $90 million loan against a $68 million purchase signals Access Point Financial is underwriting capital improvements, not just the existing asset, a structure brokers and lenders tracking airport-adjacent hotel debt should note as a template for distressed hospitality recapitalizations.

The numbers

Endeavor’s $68 million purchase price is roughly 51% below the $139 million RLJ paid in 2006, across a 1,057-room, seven-hotel portfolio plus one restaurant parcel, financed with a $90 million loan.

What’s next

Neither RLJ nor Endeavor has detailed renovation plans for the portfolio. Track Chicago’s broader hotel repricing trend at Chicago.