Dune Said to Be Buying Mortgage on Manhattan’s Mark Hotel From Anglo Irish – Bloomberg

Dune Real Estate Partners agreed to buy the mortgage for New York’s Mark hotel for about $190 million as the Manhattan lodging market continues to recover, a person with knowledge of the transaction said.

Anglo Irish Bank is selling the loan on the Upper East Side luxury hotel, where rooms start at about $450 a night, said the person, who asked not to be identified because negotiations are private.

Dune, based in New York and led by Daniel Neidich, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) real estate executive, plans to work with Alexico Group, the hotel’s developer, the person said. The deal’s closing date is unknown, the person said. The Wall Street Journal reported the transaction earlier today.

New York City hotel sales probably will double to as much as $2.4 billion this year as Manhattan is the most active U.S. market for lodging transactions, Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels said last month. Increasing financing availability and plans by investors to sell assets before loans expire next year are likely to boost sales in the city to at least $1.9 billion in 2011, according to the London-based investment-services company.

Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels is a unit of Chicago-based Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., the largest publicly traded commercial property broker after Los Angeles-based CB Richard Ellis Inc.

Dune Real Estate Partners oversees funds that have more than $1.5 billion under management and target distressed, underperforming and undervalued assets, according to a March 4 company statement.

The Mark, located on Madison Avenue at 77th Street, features a restaurant run by chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nadja Brandt in Los Angeles at nbrandt@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kara Wetzel at kwetzel@bloomberg.net