Sold out condo hotel: a sign of hot times in Napa

Napa Valley Register Online | LocalNews
: By KEVIN COURTNEY, Register Staff Writer
Sunday, December 10, 2006 1:13 AM PST
Want proof that downtown Napa is becoming a hot address? One hundred investors together and paid an eye-popping $63 million last week to own rooms in the luxury Westin Verasa hotel on McKinstry Street.

The condo hotel hasn't yet risen from the ground, but two of the 100 buyers paid $1.25 million each for suites that will overlook the Napa River and the planned Oxbow nature preserve, said Benjamin Tice, director of sales for Westin Verasa.

Buyers, who paid an average of $630,000, will own rooms at the Westin Verasa. They will be entitled to stay at the hotel up to 29 days a year. The rest of the time, the rooms will be rented to the public.

'We sold out,' Tice said of the first phase. The hotel's remaining 60 units will be put on sale early next year. Now starting construction, the hotel is scheduled to open in late 2008.
Playground Destination Properties, a division of Intrawest, a major hotel-resort developer, sold the 100 rooms within a few months of opening a sales office on First Street."

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