Welcome to Blackstone U.S.A. – Tablet Magazine
The Hotel del Coronado s Victorian red turrets peak above the sand dunes off the coast of San Diego. Developed by two industrialists in 1888 at the height of the Gilded Age, the Hotel Del serves as an iconic California backdrop, including in the classic 1959 film Some Like It Hot. A recent $400 million renovation added over 15,000 square feet of event space to the already expansive oceanfront campus.
Just 10 miles north, in another oceanside neighborhood called Pacific Beach, sits Bay Pointe Apartments, a 1960s era garden style apartment complex with over 500 units spread across multiple sand-colored buildings.
What do the two complexes have in common? They re both owned by the New York-based private equity firm Blackstone, as are hundreds of thousands of other properties across the country.
Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust (BREIT) acquired a majority stake in the Hotel Del in 2011 for $600 million. Ten years later, in one of the largest known real estate transactions in San Diego s history, Blackstone purchased 66 residential complexes across the county for over $1 billion, including Bay Pointe Apartments. Many of the units in these buildings were previously classified as naturally occurring affordable housing, meaning that they had significantly below-market rents catering to working families in a city that, like many in America, is facing a stark affordability crisis. Nearly overnight, 5,800 households in America s finest city became tenants of the private equity behemoth.
With this trend only increasing in San Diego and in cities across the U.S. it is worth asking: What happens when your home, doctor s office, or favorite local restaurant gets bought up by private equity?
San Diego! In the news! Coronado and Pacific Beach are two of the more desirable towns or neighborhoods in the SD area.