Starhotels To Open 150 Apartments In Florence With Hines and Blue Noble
Main Photo: The new Starhotels apartments, Florence – imagined
Date: June 2022
Name: Il Teatro Luxury Apartment – Starhotels Collezione – to open 2024
Location: Corso Italia, formerly home to the Teatro del Maggio Fiorentino, Florence, Italy
Number of Keys: 150 apartments
Lessee: Starhotels
Owner: Joint investors Hines and Blue Noble
Joint investors Hines and Blue Noble, an international real estate investment manager, confirm that a lease agreement with Starhotels for the management of part of the asset of Corso Italia in the heart of Florence has been finalized.
Hines and Blue Noble are joint investors in the “Future Living” fund managed by Savills Investment Management SGR SpA.
The agreement with Starhotels, a player in the Italian hospitality market, is to manage three of seven buildings at Corso Italia, formerly home to the Teatro del Maggio Fiorentino. The new residential rental offer — Il Teatro Luxury Apartment – Starhotels Collezione — will include more than 150 high-end apartments of different types and dimensions for unique short-medium term stays. As a result, Corso Italia will relaunch while respecting the location’s cultural heritage and offering an innovative residential for rent product that is in growing demand.
The rental apartments will come to market in 2024 and will provide more than 170 parking spaces, a conciergerie, a terrace with solarium, a wellness center, a gym, and areas for the community dedicated to children, co-working and food and beverage. A key objective of the regeneration plan is to enhance the surrounding area, including a new piazza to be developed, with the aim of becoming a destination for the whole city. The redevelopment also will include a number of apartments for sale.
The agreement with Starhotels is part of a broader vision of the project to source materials from and partner with Italian companies. In its role as development advisor, Hines has assisted in the selection of materials, construction companies and architects involved, with a strong focus on Italian character, as a symbol of quality. In line with Hines’ and Starhotels’ values, the whole operation will be carried out according to the highest international standards of environmental sustainability and energy efficiency, with the goal of obtaining the LEED GOLD target.
“This deal is of great significance to us, as the city’s former theatre will be reimagined as an innovative residential rental product with flexible options to meet the needs of increasing mobile guest,” said Mario Abbadessa, senior managing director & country head of Hines Italy. “We finalised our first investment in Florence in 2016 with the acquisition of an asset in Via Tornabuoni and we will keep investing in the city as its world renowned for cultural and artistic wealth. We believe in Florence and its future potential and our urban projects are designed to give back renewed spaces to the community, creating value for the city.”
“Blue Noble welcomes Starhotels to our proposed residential rental offering in the historical city of Florence,” said Paul Forshaw, founding partner and CEO of Blue Noble. “As the city’s former theatre, the site has significant cultural heritage and historical importance. Starhotels is an Italian brand with an appreciation of Florentine culture. We believe that they are naturally positioned to reflect this in the operation of exceptional short-medium term housing solutions meeting, and exceeding, the demands of increasingly mobile guests.”
Cavaliere del Lavoro Elisabetta Fabri, president and CEO of Starhotels, said, “This project is full of meaning for us Florentines, which was once the beating heart of music in the city. A few months before the launch of our Duomo Luxury Apartments in Milan, we are enthusiastically taking on this challenge to strengthen our presence in the high end residential market, to meet the needs of modern business and leisure travelers.”
Price: Undisclosed
THPT Comment: Interesting move for giants like Hines and Blue Noble to partner with a small, but excellent, local Italian hotel company, with some 30 hotels in Italy, including a few in London, Paris and New York – very enterprising…well done.
First Seen: Institutional Real Estate
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