Airport gets ritzy hotel

Grander plans are in the works for an off-site airport parking lot in Cary.

Sahaj Hotels plans to convert the I-40 Park & Fly at 251 Airpark Drive to a Crowne Plaza hotel, offering ritzy accommodations to Triangle visitors.

The Cary company, under a partnership called Windsor Hotels, paid $3.65 million for the 6.9-acre site north of the interchange of Interstate 40 at Airport Boulevard. That's about 88 percent more than what the parking operator paid in 2002.

Sahaj wants to build 200 rooms, a 12,000-square-foot ballroom and a 2,000-square-foot meeting space.

Hitesh Patel, the company's president, hopes to begin early next year and wrap up in summer 2009.

It would be the company's sixth hotel in the the state and second in the Triangle. Sahaj also owns the Wingate Inn on Page Road in Durham.

Five years ago, Patel was a mover and shaker in the Big Apple, lining up land deals for hoteliers in Manhattan. But he yearned for a slower pace in a growing market.

He settled on the Triangle after reading about the region in Forbes magazine, he says.

In Cary, he will battle for travelers seeking luxury accommodations less than two miles from Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

Average nightly rates in Cary hotels surged to a five-year high of $102.25 in October, according to Smith Travel Research. That's up 22 percent from October 2006.

A South Carolina investment group is thinking Arby's.

Partnerships called Raleigh Focus, formed by Philip J. Wilson of Greenville, S.C., paid at least $8.1 million, or about $458 per square foot, for six Arby's properties in Raleigh, Apex, Cary and Garner, according to county and state records.

Now the partnerships are focused on flipping them individually. One store on Capital Boulevard in Raleigh sold last month for $2.07 million -- 31 percent more than what Raleigh Focus paid. Stores on New Bern Avenue and Fairview Drive are listed with price tags representing similar premiums.

Investors have been drawn to single-tenant retail properties because they offer long-term returns from good-credit tenants who often agree to pay most operating costs -- utilities, taxes, maintenance, insurance -- related to the building.

Investors have spent at least $19.2 million on fast-food real estate in Wake County this year, according to Koonce Realty Research of Raleigh. That's more than twice the annual average over the previous five years.