Owner: Hilton to get $7.1 million upgrade

RockBridge Partners, the new owner of the downtown Hilton, announced it will spend $7.1 million renovating the hotel.

RockBridge bought the hotel earlier this month, though local reports, including one in The Advocate, named Dallas-based Prism Hotels & Resorts as the buyer.

Prism had been doing an evaluation since May and was considering buying the hotel. When news of the $40 million sale broke, officials with Prism and seller Commercial Properties Realty Trust confirmed the sale without pointing out it was RockBridge, not Prism, that ended up being the buyer.

Prism, which will continue to manage the hotel, referred calls to a public relations firm that would not talk on the record. Instead, it forwarded a Sept. 5 news release from RockBridge noting Prism had brought the “off-market” deal for the 290-room Hilton Baton Rouge Capitol Center.

“Acquiring a premium-branded, historic property at a significant discount to replacement cost aligns well with our investment philosophy,” said Jim Merkel, chief executive officer of RockBridge, said.

The company would not release any details on what renovations will take place or what the timeframe for the work is.

Prism was part of the redevelopment team headed by Commercial Properties and had managed the hotel briefly after it reopened in 2006 after it sat empty and dilapidated for decades.

The company manages more than 56 hotels.

RockBridge Partners’ parent RockBridge Capital LLC is a hotel investment firm based in Columbus, Ohio, with more than 300 debt-and-equity hotel investments in the U.S. in the last two decades, according to its website. It has invested nearly $3 billion in the hospitality industry since 1992 as part of roughly $5 billion in total transactions.