ARLINGTON, VA-HEI Hotels & Resorts has acquired the 154-room Hotel Palomar Arlington from JBG Cos., for an undisclosed price. The only boutique hotel in this submarket, HEI Hotels plans to rebrand it as Le Meridien Arlington.

Jones Lang LaSalle managing director Jeffrey Davis and senior vice president Gilda Perez-Alvarado represented JBG Cos.

Bidding for the hotel was robust, Perez-Alvarado tells GlobeSt.com, in part because there is a limited supply of luxury hotel product in the greater DC area, to say nothing of the Arlington/Rosslyn submarket. “DC is one of the strongest investment markets in the US and Arlington and Rosslyn are, in particular, good locations due to their inflow of Class A office product,” she says.

In addition, Hotel Palomar Arlington is one of the newest hotels in the area and it has been performing well. For these reasons, she adds, it was able to trade relatively quickly, given that it went on the market at the worst possible time—last August, when hotel sales virtually ceased.

The hotel was developed in 2007 by an affiliate of JBG,  as the hotel component of Waterview.  It will be HEI’s 17th hotel in the Starwood brand family and its fifth Le Meridien hotel. The company has tapped hospitality veteran Jon Coleman as general manager of Le Meridien Arlington.