St. Joe Company has closed on three strategic real estate transactions and provides an update on projects that are scheduled to open in 2023.
In early December, The St. Joe Company closed on the purchase of The Pearl Hotel in Rosemary Beach, FL., a luxury 55-room hotel in Northwest Florida’s highly sought-after Scenic Highway 30A corridor. Since 2014, The St. Joe Company has managed the hotel’s day-to-day operations. With the purchase, St. Joe now owns three hotels in the Scenic Highway 30A corridor and has two additional hotels under construction along this corridor that are planned to open in 2023.
This past November, St. Joe purchased an additional 30 percent share of Pier Park North, an approximately 320,000 square foot shopping center in Panama City Beach’s Pier Park shopping and entertainment district, from joint venture partner Casto. Pier Park North has major anchor tenants, including Dick’s Sporting Goods and The Fresh Market. This transaction increased St. Joe’s ownership stake to 90%.
Also this past iNovember, St. Joe and joint venture partner Flournoy Development Company finalized the sale of Sea Sound Apartments, a 300-unit apartment community. St. Joe sold the 18.97-acre vacant parcel to the joint venture in January 2020 for $5.1 million and the joint venture sold the apartment community in November of 2022 for $92 million.
“These transactions further position the company to deliver on our strategies of creating higher values for real estate owned and increasing recurring revenue with best-in-class assets in locations that create synergistic accretive value and speak to our belief in the growth of this region,” said Jorge Gonzalez, president and CEO of The St. Joe Company. “The Pearl Hotel is unlike any other hotel in this region and benefits from the continued visitation demand along the Scenic Highway 30A corridor. Together with our existing hotels and those that we are developing, St. Joe is positioned as the dominant hotelier along the corridor.
“Similarly, the tenant mix and ideal location of Pier Park North position it for years of continued shopper traffic that will be bolstered by its proximity to St. Joe’s existing and planned hotels, apartments, residential communities, and the FSU Health Medical Campus both in the Pier Park shopping and entertainment district and along the nearby State Road 79 corridor.”
A busy end to 2022 makes way for a very active 2023, as St. Joe expects to open five new hotels, including the 85-room The Lodge 30A in Seagrove Beach, the 255-room Embassy Suites in Panama City Beach, the 75-room Camp Creek Inn and adjacent Watersound Club amenity expansion, the 107-room Home2 Suites in Santa Rosa Beach, and the 124-room Hotel Indigo in downtown Panama City’s historic marina district. Once these projects are complete, St. Joe’s hotel portfolio will more than double to 1,117 rooms.
Photo: The Pearl (St. Joe Company)