Zuber Lawler Transaction Announcement

November 16, 2021 | Press

Zuber Lawler represented Ken Real Estate, a major Japanese real estate firm and a longstanding firm client, in sale of its Lake Tahoe Resort Hotel, a 400-room hotel in South Lake Tahoe, California, to Brookfield Properties, a very large U.S.-based real estate firm.  The Lake Tahoe Resort Hotel is the largest hotel in the Lake Tahoe area.  The $116,500,000 sale transaction, which closed in late October, took a little more than three months to complete, and involved issues typically found in a purchase or sale of a hospitality facility, including a “holdback escrow” setting aside a portion of the purchase price as security for the purchaser in the event seller representations and warranties turn out to be incorrect, and a separate “ABC [Alcoholic Beverage Control] escrow” concerning transfer of hotel liquor licenses to the purchaser.  One novel feature of the transaction arose from the fact that although the hotel building itself is located within California, it is situated right on the Nevada border in South Lake Tahoe, and the hotel real property includes access easements which extend across the state border into Nevada.  Thus, real estate title examinations, and related recordings, in both Nevada as well as California were necessary.  A number of ZL attorneys and staff assisted in this transaction, including partners David Lambert and Jerry Libby, and Lizzie Fanckboner, Dariya Cherkasskaya and Rica Tupil.