Jan. 21–The owners of Turtle Bay Resort are looking to sell a stake in the property or partner with new investors as part of a plan to develop more hotel rooms and residential units at the vacation destination on Oahu's North Shore.
Chicago-based real estate brokerage and investment management firm JLL was retained by a consortium of lenders that owns Turtle Bay to solicit a capital injection for the resort, according to an announcement released by the resort Wednesday.
A sale of the whole resort property could potentially result, but is not the focus of the offering through JLL, according to one person familiar with the effort.
"Turtle Bay Resort represents a generational opportunity to invest in a high-profile existing property and a development opportunity which is extremely difficult to replicate in Hawaii," John Strauss, a JLL director, said in a statement. "With the recently approved entitlements, the timing is ideal for ownership to explore investment and recapitalization opportunities to help Turtle Bay achieve its full potential."
A group of financial firms that included Credit Suisse Group and Wells Fargo &Co. assumed ownership in 2010 of roughly 1,300 acres that includes the existing 452-room hotel, two golf courses, undeveloped resort land and some adjacent farmland from Los Angeles-based real estate investment firm Oaktree Capital Management LP after Oaktree defaulted on debt tied to the property following its own development efforts.
Led by management firm Replay Resorts, the owner group revised an environmental impact statement to reduce the scope of a previously approved expansion plan for the resort, and last year completed a deal to preserve much of the resort's undeveloped area in a natural state for public use in perpetuity.
The preservation deal paid the resort's owners $45 million in return for giving the state ownership of 53 acres fronting Kawela Bay plus an easement prohibiting development on 568 acres that includes land occupied by and surrounding the resort's two golf courses. The city also acquired 8 acres for beachfront park use, and the resort gave up the ability to develop 650 homes.
Of the $45 million, the state paid $35 million. The city paid $7.5 million. And the Army, in partnership with The Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit, paid $2.5 million.
The preservation pact left the resort's owners with oceanfront land on opposite sides of the existing hotel where up to 100 homes and two hotels or timeshare properties with a combined 625 rooms can be built.
Turtle Bay consultants estimated the cost of expanding the resort on the reduced development footprint at $370 million in a supplemental environmental impact statement filed with the state in 2013.
JLL said more than $50 million has been spent since 2013 to renovate the hotel rooms and other facilities at the resort. Based on the resort's sale of 32 acres under the Kuilima Estates condominiums at Turtle Bay five years ago for about $500,000 an acre, a rough value for the 852 acres of resort land could be about $425 million or more.
