A counter-cyclical hospitality bet made at the height of pandemic uncertainty has paid off for Crescent Real Estate, which has sold the 330-room Hotel at Avalon in Alpharetta, Georgia, in what the firm describes as one of the most notable hotel transactions in the Atlanta market in recent years.
Creschent acquired the property in September 2020 — a moment when hospitality investment had largely frozen — betting that the hotel's position inside Avalon, a high-performing mixed-use destination featuring luxury retail, dining, office, residential, and entertainment tenants, would underpin long-term value. That thesis proved out: the hotel recovered alongside the broader lodging sector, benefited from Avalon's continued growth, and ultimately attracted significant buyer interest.
The Asset's Edge
Opened in 2018, the Hotel at Avalon functions as the sole lodging option within the Avalon development — a structural advantage that competitors in the submarket simply cannot replicate. The property's embedded relationship with an active dining and retail ecosystem gave it a demand driver that standalone hotels rarely enjoy, insulating revenue during softer travel periods and amplifying it during peak events and activations at the broader campus.
"In the fall of 2020, very few investors were willing to lean into hospitality," said Christopher Goff, Senior Managing Director and Head of Capital Formation at Crescent Real Estate. "We believed The Hotel at Avalon was a truly irreplaceable asset located within one of the country's premier mixed-use communities, and we were able to acquire it at a basis that reflected a moment of extraordinary market uncertainty."
Operator and Advisor Roles
HEI Hotels & Resorts managed the property throughout Crescent's ownership, with Troy Furbay, Managing Director and Head of Hospitality at Crescent, crediting HEI's stewardship as a meaningful driver of performance. Investment bank Eastdil Secured advised on the disposition.
For hospitality operators and investors tracking mixed-use hotel performance, the Avalon sale reinforces a pattern that has strengthened since the pandemic recovery: hotels embedded within curated live-work-play environments tend to outperform isolated full-service properties, particularly when the surrounding retail and dining mix generates consistent foot traffic and dwell time.
Creschent manages assets across office, life sciences, multifamily, industrial, and senior living in addition to hospitality, with assets under management, development, and investment capacity exceeding $10 billion. The firm's willingness to deploy capital into hotels during the COVID-19 downturn mirrors a strategy that several institutional investors have since validated — a dynamic covered in depth in Food & Beverage Magazine's broader coverage of hospitality and foodservice recovery trends.
The transaction signals continued institutional appetite for premium lodging assets tied to experiential retail and restaurant-anchored hospitality destinations, a segment that has drawn outsized investor attention as consumer spending on experiences has outpaced goods since 2023.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
