The Hilton Meadowlands at 2 Meadowlands Plaza in East Rutherford — Courtesy: JLL
By Joshua Burd
A well-known hotel in East Rutherford is on the market for sale, brokers with JLL announced, touting its highly visible location and the potential to convert it to a residential building.
The 427-room property, the Hilton Meadowlands, sits directly across Route 3 from the Meadowlands Sports Complex and benefits from a broad mix of demand drivers, JLL said. The brokerage team is targeting a price in the $50 million range, noting that the hotel underwent a $7.7 million renovation last year and has seen roughly $14.2 million of aggregate capital expenditures since 2014.
Would-be investors should also benefit from the opening of the adjacent, 3 million-square-foot American Dream entertainment and retail complex, JLL said. But the firm also raised the possibility that a buyer could convert the 21-story property in order to capture the still-strong demand for apartments in northern New Jersey.
“Given the offering’s pricing, and the implied basis to a prospective investor, as well as the geographical barriers obstructing the construction of new supply, the hotel presents a unique conversion opportunity,” the brokers wrote in their offering materials. “Situated less than 10 miles west of Midtown Manhattan, providing unparalleled access to New York City at an affordable rate, and immediately proximate to several entertainment and retail attractions, the asset possesses a number of characteristics that are highly coveted by today’s renters.”
JLL’s New Jersey capital markets team, which is based in Morristown, noted that last year’s renovation included a refresh of 240 guestrooms. The hotel, meantime, is home to 30,000 square feet of meeting space, a Starbucks and a restaurant known as Bergen Social.
Features at the adjacent sports complex include MetLife Stadium and the Meadowlands Racetrack. At full build-out, the $5 billion American Drive is slated to include more than 450 retailers, 100 dining options and 12 family-oriented entertainment attractions.
“The Hilton Meadowlands offers the opportunity to acquire an institutionally maintained asset at a substantial discount to replacement cost in a high-barrier-to-entry market given the large ecosystem of undevelopable wetlands in East Rutherford and a lack of available construction financing for lodging assets,” JLL wrote.
The JLL marketing team includes hotel specialists Jeffrey Davis, KC Patel, Nikhil Chuchra and Desmund Delaney, along with residential specialists Jose Cruz and Nicholas Stefans.
