ATLANTA—Ocean Plaza Beach Resort, a 204-room historic hotel in Tybee Island, GA, has secured a $13.545 million acquisition loan. HFF helped Lincrhis Hotel arrange the financing.

HFF senior managing director Mark Sixour and managing director Greg LaBine led the team that arranged the floating-rate loan with M&T Bank. Linchris plans to spend about $1.5 million in the first year for property upgrades.

”This acquisition represents Linchris' second foray into the Southeastern US hotel market, with their recent acquisition of the Holiday Inn Daytona Beach being their first, ”LaBine tells GlobeSt.com. Linchris controls 31 hotels with more than 3,600 rooms. 

Originally built in 1909, Ocean Plaza Beach Resort overlooks the Atlantic Ocean from its beachfront location on the south end of Tybee Island. The island is about 20 miles east of historic downtown Savannah, GA.

“Linchris has had past success with independent, beachfront hotels in Westerly, Rhode Island, and Provincetown, Massachusetts, so this acquisition will complement their growing hotel portfolio well,” LaBine says. “M&T has financed Linchris previously and quickly got comfortable with the operational improvements Linchris can provide through their superior management to increase the bottom line performance of the asset.”

Tybee Island is the closest beach destination to Atlanta, Augusta, Macon, Chattanooga, and several other metropolitan areas. The six-building, 223,986-square-foot resort hotel sits on 5.12 acres and has a restaurant, lounge, meeting, and banquet space, business center, two outdoor pools, and a video game arcade.