Berkeley-Carteret SOLD $16 million

SOLD. $16 million. Asbury may just get the taste of South Beach if the hotel is refurbished in the style of the Amersterdam Hospitality Group other holdings. Maybe not.

These guys were also a joint venture of partners who bought the Sears Tower in Chicago for $840 million in 2004. Scoop.

New York real estate investors Joseph and Jacob Chetrit bought the Berkeley-Carteret Oceanfront Hotel on Tuesday, paying $16 million for the historic 248-room building on the city's waterfront according to published reports.

Sold by Daniel and Ike Ahn. buyers were the Chetrit brothers (see Cherit Group) want to get the hotel refurbished, restored and reopened as soon as possible. The Empress Hotel, recently reopened, is the only other hotel in Asbury Park.

The brothers' company, the Chetrit Group, based in New York, has large real estate holdings around the country.

Daniel Ahn, a Queens-based entrepreneur, bought the hotel in December 1998 for $5.1 million plus $181,000 owed in back taxes. Ahn and his family refurbished the Berkeley-Carteret and kept it open through the years that the city's waterfront plans were being created, approved and financed.

My favorite piece of the hotel history:

Ahn had bought the hotel from the Maharishi Maheshi Yogi, whose organization bought it in 1994 from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for $1.85 million, of which $625,000 was for the hotel and the remainder for back taxes and liens. At that time, the property was assessed at $3 million.

The maharishi planned to use the hotel as a Transcendental Meditation university and holistic health care center. The city did not allow those uses. The maharishi had to maintain the hotel's primary use as a hotel.

And then there was Henry:

The owners in the mid-1980s were a group led by local businessmen Henry and Sebastian Vaccaro, who restored the hotel but ended up in bankruptcy. They hit the market at wrong end of the banking and lending scandals of the 80's. We give him the credit at least of getting it re-opened, as prior to that it was completely gone. Lucky it didn't get knocked down or burned down.