NEW ORLEANS, La. — Saints and Pelicans owner Gayle Benson has added the Windsor Court Hotel to her collection of downtown New Orleans property, closing on a majority stake in the luxury high-rise on Friday.
Benson bought the controlling share from Crow Holdings, a Dallas company that had held majority ownership since 2009. No price was made public. She has said she intends to put millions of dollars into renovations over the coming two years, aiming to lift the hotel further among the top luxury properties in the country.
The Berger Company, run by New Orleans developers Darryl Berger and Ryan Berger, keeps a minority piece of the hotel and will stay involved in running it. The deal is described as the first time in the hotel’s 42 years that it has been held entirely under one ownership arrangement.
Local businessman Jimmy Coleman built the Windsor Court, which welcomed its first guests in 1984 as the city prepared for the World’s Fair, on a corner of the Central Business District. Its best-known rooms include The Grill Room and the Polo Lounge, though the scope of planned work on guest rooms and public spaces has not been spelled out.
The purchase joins a growing Benson portfolio that already includes the Hyatt Regency beside the Caesars Superdome, three office towers along Poydras Street and three Harmony Circle properties.
The hotel now competes with the Four Seasons, which opened in 2021. Downtown New Orleans has about 26,000 hotel rooms, and occupancy averaged a bit under 59% over the 12 months through September, while luxury hotels did better at roughly 61.5%. Benson has said she expects the upgrades to help grow occupancy over the next few years.
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Filed under: New Orleans LA Business News
