Westin Hilton Head seller acquired resort out of bankruptcy, sold it 13 years later
Last week, Colorado-based KSL Capital Partners, LLC announced its purchase of the Westin Hilton Head Island Resort & Spa, a beachfront property that’s seen millions of dollars worth of renovations over the past decade.
But the company that sold the hotel to KSL bought it at a very different time, when it was on the verge of financial failure.
On Sept. 26, the nearly 14-acre Westin property at 2 Grasslawn Ave. changed hands for approximately $199.8 million, Beaufort County property records show. The buyer was Grasslawn Property, LLC, which lists its address as KSL Capital’s Denver office on the deed of sale. The seller was SWVP Hilton Head, LLC, an affiliate of real estate capital firm Southwest Value Partners.
SWVP, which is headquartered in both Nashville, Tennessee and San Diego, California, acquired the Westin Hilton Head in 2012 as part of a bankruptcy reorganization. The Hilton Head resort and the Westin La Paloma Resort & Spa in Tucson, Arizona, emerged from Chapter 11 in early 2012. SWVP was positioned as equity to the reorganizing debtor, Transwest Resort Properties, which originally filed for protection in November 2010.
When it acquired the properties, SWVP pledged to invest more than $60 million of new equity, including capital improvements, in both. The company ended up pouring more than $47 million into Hilton Head alone, according to KSL; the upgrades include a $13.8 million renovation project completed last year.
The Westin Hilton Head was managed by Starwood Hotels & Resorts after the sale to SWVP, a 2012 press release said. Starwood was acquired by Marriott International in 2016.
Marriott will continue to manage the Westin Hilton Head under the new ownership, and guests will still be able to earn and redeem Marriott points, representatives for the owner said. The resort employs roughly 250 people – 350 during peak season – and operations are expected to continue as they have in recent years.