Hotel Brexton, Inn at the Colonnade hit market
The owner of Hotel Brexton and the Inn at the Colonnade has put 10 properties in his portfolio on the market as he plans to retire and sail around the world.
Richard W. Naing, 66, said he expects to sell to multiple buyers and doesn’t have a target number for the the properties, which include a downtown office building, a group of 16 apartments on St. Paul Street, an Ocean City condo and an Eastern Shore courthouse, in addition to the hotels. He hopes to complete the transactions by the summer.
Naing, the president of RWN Development Group, said he may decide to hold onto the money-making Colonnade, which is close to the Johns Hopkins University Homewood campus. He’s also open to joint ventures, but the goal is to effectively retire.
“I think it’s time for me to hang it up and enjoy myself,” he said.
Naing immigrated to the United States from Myanmar and went to high school in the Chevy Chase area. After graduating from Carnegie Mellon University, he started working in real estate looking for a way to pay for law school. The career stuck.
Naing, who lives in Potomac, worked as a broker and developer, at one point owning more than two dozen properties in the Washington area, including several hotels. He entered the Baltimore market in 2004 with the $29.5 million purchase of the Boxer portfolio, eight older office buildings that had been owned by a Texas firm.
Naing ended up selling those properties to investors and putting the money toward the Colonnade and restoration of Hotel Brexton. The Mount Vernon hotel, which reopened in 2010, was once the home of Wallis Warfield, who went on to marry the former Edward VIII of England and become the Duchess of Windsor.
RWN had been eying an expansion of the hotel, as well as redevelopment of some of its other properties.