New owners for Hotel 43, downtown Courtyard by Marriott

The owners of The Grove Hotel, the largest hotel in downtown Boise, have bought Hotel 43 and the Courtyard by Marriott, another downtown hotel on Broadway.

Block 22 LLC expects to close on the 162-room Courtyard on Dec. 7 and the 112-room Hotel 43 on Jan. 6. Block 22, which built and opened The Grove Hotel on Dec. 31, 1997, will now have a combined 524 rooms in downtown Boise.

With three new downtown hotels opening within three blocks of the Boise Centre in the next few months, Block 22 now has the two closest hotels to the convention center. The 250-room Grove shares Grove Plaza with the Boise Centre and Hotel 43 is across the street to the west of the convention center.

“We like the locations of both,” said John Cunningham, CEO/president of Block 22. “Hotel 43’s proximity not just to the Boise Centre but to us was appealing. Courtyard’s proximity to St. Luke’s and Boise State was appealing.”

The sales price was not disclosed. The assessed value for the Hotel 43 property is $8.62 million and for the Courtyard by Marriott is $11.9 million, according to Ada County Assessor records.

The Block 22 ownership comprises 50 percent JRS Properties III, a Simplot entity, and 50 percent WC/WLDC Idaho LLC, a company headed by A.J. Balukoff with Larry Leasure, Jim White, Jerry Jenkins and other investors.

Hotel 43 and Courtyard had primarily the same ownership group under two separate companies: Cameron S-Sixteen Hospitality at Hotel 43 and Cameron S-Sixteen Broadway at Courtyard. These are made up of S-Sixteen, a Simplot family partnership, in a joint venture with Interstate Hotels & Resorts, and Cameron Investments with Rick Clark, Ben Pursley and other investors.

“It was a cycle of events for us,” said Pursley, who stepped into the partnership a year ago upon the death of his father, attorney Ken Pursley. “Having recently done renovations at both hotels, what should we do now? Should we ride it out? We just thought it was a good time to go to market.”

The Courtyard was renovated for $3.4 million in 2015-16, and Hotel 43 got a $2.8 million renovation in 2014-15.

Cameron S-Sixteen and Block 22 were not aware of each others’ interest in buying or selling. Cameron S-Sixteen listed the properties with CBRE in Seattle.

“We got wind these two were listed,” Cunningham said.

“I think it’s a tremendous benefit,” Boise Centre Executive Director Pat Rice said of having local ownership of the lodging closest to the convention center. “They already know the market. We’re dealing with a known entity, which is a plus. It’s not somebody coming in and trying to reinvent the market.”

With Hotel 43, Cameron Investments reimagined a former Statehouse Inn in 2006-07 into an eclectic design that won plaudits from guests, Pursley said.

“We gave our design team a lot of latitude to embrace the local Idaho art scene,” said Pursley, the operations manager at Campur Management, the operating entity for both Cameron S-Sixteen companies.

Ten years ago, S-Sixteen owned the Courtyard by Marriott and Cameron Investments owned Hotel 43.

“We brought (S-Sixteen) into Hotel 43 and they brought us into Courtyard,” Pursley said.

Rick Clark and Ken Pursley had dominating roles in the partnership in the early years but both had stepped back in recent years. Pursley, founding partner at the Boise law firm Givens Pursley, died in a boating accident on the Amazon in Brazil in October 2015.

Ben Pursley said his father’s death played no role in deciding to sell.

“We’ve been in it for 10 years,” he said. “We tend to be not super long-term holders.”

Block 22, meanwhile, had expansion in mind.

“We’ve been looking for growth opportunities for some time,” Cunningham said. “We looked seriously at adding 100 rooms on the Grove footprint. We started looking at nearby properties. Should we build a new hotel? We were moving in that direction and when the other hotels were announced, we put things on hold.”

Block 22 will get the keys to Hotel 43 just as the new 113-room Inn at 500 Capitol at Myrtle Street and Capitol Boulevard welcomes its first guests in the first week of January. The 150-room Hyatt Place and 186-room Residence Inn by Marriott are also expected to open in downtown Boise in the coming months.

“We’re certainly aware of the properties under construction,” Cunningham said. “Long term, we think (buying Hotel 43 and Courtyard by Marriott) makes a lot of sense for our program.”

The Grove Hotel is the third largest hotel in Idaho behind the Coeur d’Alene Resort and the Riverside Hotel in Garden City, though Sun Valley Resort has a combined 440 rooms at the Sun Valley Lodge, Sun Valley Inn and 227 apartments.

“We are taking the reins of two very well-run hotels with strong management teams, headed by Andrea Cox at the Courtyard and Lisa Benjamin at Hotel 43. Virtually nothing is in need of change,” Cunningham said. “The names and brand affiliates will remain the same and we are excited to continue a long, mutually beneficial relationship with Chandlers Steakhouse.”