Access Point Financial and TMGOC Ventures co-originated a $120 million bridge loan and preferred equity package to recapitalize Kailas Companies’ conversion of a downtown New Orleans office tower into a dual-branded hotel, according to a joint announcement on Business Wire published Aug. 20, 2026. The financing supports the ongoing conversion of a 31-story former office tower into a 250-key Fairmont by Accor and a 216-key Element by Westin, one block from Canal Street in the city’s central business district.
Kailas Companies acquired the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill-designed tower β built in 1970 β in 2014 with plans to eventually convert it to hospitality use, and began construction on the conversion in January 2024. The finished property will also include Emeril’s Delmonico restaurant and roughly 150,000 square feet of Class A office space alongside the two hotel brands. Russ Schildcrout of Ackman-Ziff brokered the transaction.
A Local Operator With a Three-Decade Track Record
“Naveen Kailas and Kailas Companies are an ideal hotel partner with a strong and respected local presence that knows the New Orleans market intimately,” said Dana Tsakanikas, chief investment officer at Access Point Financial. Kailas Companies has operated in the region for 36 years and currently manages more than 2 million square feet of office, multifamily and retail properties, according to the announcement. The recapitalization comes from TMGOC Ventures principals Sunju Patel and Glenn Alba alongside APF, a hospitality-focused lender that has closed roughly $1.6 billion in hotel financings over the past year.
The dual-brand structure lets the property target two distinct traveler segments from a single tower: Fairmont’s full-service, luxury positioning alongside Element’s extended-stay, sustainability-focused format, a brand now owned by Marriott. Pairing two flags in one building has become an increasingly common strategy for developers converting large-footprint office towers, since a single hotel brand alone often cannot fill the square footage economically, while splitting the building lets an owner capture both business and extended-stay demand without operating two entirely separate assets.
What It Means
The New Orleans deal is part of a broader wave of office-to-hospitality and office-to-residential conversions as owners look to repurpose aging office stock that has struggled to find tenants; RealtyWire has separately covered Chicago’s $162 million office-to-residential conversion on the Magnificent Mile and broader growth in the national hotel construction pipeline, which grew to nearly 6,000 projects in the second quarter. Converting a 1970s office tower into a dual-branded hotel with restaurant and remaining office space is a more complex undertaking than ground-up hotel construction, and the deal’s structure β a bridge loan paired with preferred equity rather than permanent financing β signals the project still has work ahead before it reaches stabilized operations.
