MCA, Sheraton Discuss Selling Their Premiere Hotel to Cigna

MCA and Sheraton are negotiating to sell their 2-year-old Sheraton Premiere Hotel in Universal City, which has been plagued by low occupancy.

Proposed terms weren’t revealed, but both sides in the talks said an agreement is likely within a month to sell the hotel to Cigna, a Philadelphia-based insurance company with extensive real estate holdings.

Larry Spungin, vice president of MCA’s real estate arm, wouldn’t say if the 24-story luxury hotel is losing money but acknowledged that it hasn’t performed up to expectations. He also said MCA will retain ownership of the 6.5-acre parcel of land on which the hotel rests.

Spungin said the adjacent Sheraton Universal, owned by MCA but leased and managed by Sheraton, isn’t for sale.

Built for $74 million and designed by William L. Pereira Associates of Los Angeles, the glittery Sheraton Premiere has 455 rooms and a ballroom seating 1,400. It is by far the most luxurious hotel in the San Fernando Valley and among the most luxurious in Los Angeles, said Mitchell Roberts, a hotel specialist with Laventhol & Horwath.

“You’d probably be safe to say the deal is somewhere between $80 million and $100 million,” said Ted Henderek, executive vice president at Stephen W. Brener Associates, a New York hotel consulting firm. But he cautioned that the price will depend on a host of factors, including the terms of the ground lease.