TAMPA — Someone is looking to buy the Tampa Marriott Waterside Hotel & Marina.
Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik's development team has talked to City Hall about the idea.
And Mayor Bob Buckhorn believes the prospective buyer and Vinik are one and the same.
"I am ever hopeful, cautiously optimistic and will be extremely pleased if he's able to do this," said Buckhorn, who said he spoke to Vinik's representatives about their desire to buy the Marriott in the last two to three weeks. "I know that they were interested, and they were going to pursue it."
Neither Vinik nor Marriott were talking on Tuesday, but MWS Hotel LLC — a company incorporated in Delaware in July — recently asked City Hall to confirm certain facts about the hotel.
MWS Hotel was identified as the "buyer" on a document, known as an estoppel certificate, that was sent to City Hall because the city has a lease for space in the hotel's lobby.
MWS Hotel wants to buy the entire hotel, according to the document, which was sent to the city by an out-of-town law firm that did not identify its client. The document did not disclose the price or schedule for any sale.
But getting a lease holder to sign an estoppel certificate is a common step taken before a property owner sells a piece of property or refinances the mortgage on it. The certificate verifies the terms and the status of the lease.
Buckhorn said the step probably falls "under the due diligence that a potential buyer would undertake prior to the potential acquisition of a property." He assumes Vinik is behind the certificate.
"I don't know who else it would be," said Buckhorn, who said he hasn't heard of any one other than Vinik being interested buying the Marriott, which is assessed for tax purposes at about $85.4 million.
In this case, the city's lease goes back to the original deal to build the hotel.
In 1997, Tampa officials agreed to help finance construction of the 719-room Marriott by agreeing to make yearly lease payments totaling nearly $32 million over 19 years. At the time, the lease was seen as a necessary part of the funding of the $110 million project.
In 2015, the city has budgeted $1.785 million for the next lease payment.
If Vinik does buy the Marriott, it wouldn't be his only hotel near the arena where his Lightning play.
On Sept. 11, the City Council approved a rezoning for a new 400-room hotel on 2.8 acres that Vinik owns just west of the Amalie Arena.
The new hotel would be just across the street from the Marriott Waterside on a parking lot at the corner of S Florida Avenue and Old Water Street.
In addition to the 400 hotel rooms, the 770,000-square-foot building is proposed to have 50 apartments or condominiums on its top floors, up to 170,000 square feet of meeting space below and 45,000 square feet of shopping, cafes or offices on the ground floor.
Vinik acquired the parking lot in 2010 when he bought the Lightning. Since then, he has amassed 24 acres around the arena, plus the Channelside Bay Plaza shopping center. He has said he will soon unveil a master plan for his holdings.
Buckhorn said he has talked to Vinik's team about the Marriott Waterside being a desired part of the master plan, though not a necessary part of it.
"It's a great idea," Buckhorn said. "That is a signature property in a signature location, and I think it would complement everything else Jeff is intending to do there."
Being in control of both the Marriott Waterside and a new hotel would allow Vinik to serve various sectors of the hotel market, plus coordinate bookings and meeting space at both properties to help bring larger events to the nearby Tampa Convention Center, the mayor said.
And having all of the properties affected by Vinik's master plan under one owner's control would be expected to make it a lot easier to plan infrastructure improvements or other changes.
The city and Vinik's team have both talked about reworking the street grid around the hockey arena.
Several streets near the arena are one-way, carrying generally faster-moving traffic. There are a couple of dead-ends, one street with a gap in the pavement, an alignment that doesn't line up from block to block and a couple of streets on an angle that doesn't match most of downtown's grid.
Buckhorn said planning to fix that becomes easier if there's a two-sided partnership between the city and Vinik.
"It makes the whole process a lot less complex, a lot more cohesive and removes a lot of the obstacles that you have with multiple landowners," he said.
The rezoning for Vinik's new hotel comes up for a second hearing and a final council vote on Oct. 2.
After that, Vinik and his partners are expected to pick a hotel operator who could help shape the hotel plan. As proposed, Vinik's new hotel would be 325 feet tall, or about 25 floors. That's a foot shorter than the Marriott Waterside, which has 27 floors.
Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report.