PALM BEACH—Carey Watermark just grabbed the Boca Raton Marriott at Boca Center. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Carey plans to launch a $7 million renovation on the Palm Beach County hotel.

Located at 5150 Town Center Circle in Boca Raton, FL, the full-service hotel has 256 rooms at the Boca Center, a mixed-use development that includes 375,000 square feet of class A office space, 21 retail stores, and 12 restaurants.

“The acquisition of the Boca Raton Marriott at Boca Center represented the opportunity to invest in a high quality, full-service property in an established market with strong growth prospects and high barriers to entry,” says Michael Medzigian, CEO of Carey. The hotel is next to the Town Center at Boca, the second-largest mall in Florida by square footage with over 1.5 million. Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale's, Macy's, and Sears anchor Town Center.

Carey was attracted to the Boca Raton market, in part, by its resort, leisure and commercial business. Boca Raton is home to over 11 million square feet of office space and upscale residential communities, as well as the main campus of Florida Atlantic University and the Atlantic Ocean beaches.

Driven by both resort and commercial business, Boca Raton's hotel market occupancy was 69% in 2013. That's a 6.1% year-over-year increase. The larger Palm Beach market, which includes Boca Raton, achieved 10% RevPAR growth in 2013, exceeding the national RevPAR growth of 5.2%. With a constrained supply pipeline and steadily increasing visitation trends, Carey is betting Boca's lodging metrics offer positive signs for sustainable growth.

“We believe that our planned hotel renovations—updating guest rooms to the Marriott 'Room of the future' brand standard and refreshing meeting spaces and guestroom corridors—will reinforce the hotel's status as a market leader,” says Medzigian. An affiliate of HEI Hotels & Resorts will continue making the hotel.