The West Hollywood EDITION spent months buried in debt. Now it belongs to two billionaire brothers from London.
Simon and David Reuben took control of the 190-room hotel on the Sunset Strip this month. An affiliate of their investment vehicle, Motcomb Estates, assumed the property after months of trouble at 9040 Sunset Boulevard.
A deed in lieu recorded in April lists about $211 million in outstanding debt. Neighbors, staff and the owners of the building’s 20 condos are waiting to see what happens next.
Property records show the Reubens were named foreclosing beneficiary. Then later substitute trustee, according to The Real Deal. The outlet reported the April deed in lieu reflects roughly $211 million in unpaid debt. It also reported the Reubens had already bought the J.P. Morgan loan tied to the hotel.
Representatives for the parties involved did not respond to requests for comment, according to Hoodline.
Who Are the Reuben Brothers?
Simon and David Reuben were born in Bombay, India, sons of an Iraqi Jewish family that had settled there for the textile trade. Their parents split. Their mother brought the boys to London in the 1950s. Money was tight. They went to state schools in Islington. Simon never finished his.
David started in scrap metal. Simon started in carpets. He bought England’s oldest carpet company out of receivership and used the profits to start buying property. Chelsea first. Walton Street. King’s Road. The brothers built real wealth through the 1970s and ’80s trading metals and real estate.
Then came Russia. In the early 1990s the Reubens moved into the Russian aluminum trade. Their company, Trans-World, struck tolling deals with debt-ridden Soviet-era smelters, supplying raw material and taking finished aluminum back in return. Their Russian investment topped $1.5 billion. By 1995 the company’s global sales passed $8 billion.
The business made enemies. Trans-World faced accusations of ties to organized crime, including several killings, and Russia’s Interior Minister publicly linked the Reubens to a Moscow crime organization in 1997. No criminal charges against the brothers ever followed. They later settled a separate legal dispute with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, with money awarded to Reuben Brothers.
The brothers went global in 2021, joining financier Amanda Staveley and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund in the takeover of Newcastle United. The Reubens and Staveley’s firm each hold 10 percent of the club.
The family’s net worth was estimated at £24.4 billion in 2023, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, making them Britain’s fourth wealthiest family. Their philanthropic arm, the Reuben Foundation, has donated £80 million toward Reuben College at Oxford. They’re also donors to the UK’s Conservative Party.
Edition History
The EDITION opened in 2019. Ian Schrager’s West Coast flagship for the brand he launched with Marriott in 2008.
Construction topped out in 2018. Developer Steve Witkoff called the site “the best located hotel within West Hollywood, a high barrier to entry market and one of the highest RevPAR submarkets in the country” at the time. A year earlier he told The Real Deal the site sat closest in West Hollywood to Beverly Hills. Sweeping city and ocean views from the roof.
The property has about 190 rooms. 48 suites, including two penthouses. 20 private residences.
Schrager stepped away from the Edition brand in 2022. He didn’t leave West Hollywood. His newest project, Public West Hollywood, was slated to open this month a few blocks away on the site of the old Standard. There’s debate on whether they’ll hit their projected July 15 deadline as reservations have been pushed back to mid-September.
Witkoff refinanced in 2021. Roughly $228 to $230 million, arranged by J.P. Morgan and Mack Real Estate Credit Strategies, according to Commercial Observer. It bought time. Pushed back foreclosure pressure. A signature restaurant and a guests-only rooftop pool are the property’s two big revenue engines.
Motcomb Estates was already circling the hotel in 2021. It went after a UCC foreclosure as a mezzanine lender that year, The Real Deal reported at the time.
Witkoff avoided losing the hotel with the 2021 refinancing. The Reubens kept buying into pieces of the debt which let them exercise lender remedies and take the deed in lieu in April. Lender to owner. Not a sale.
Looks like the Reubens have done this before. They used credit bids and foreclosure tools to take over the Century Plaza redevelopment in 2023.
No word yet on what they’ll do with the EDITION. Recapitalize it. Reposition it. Sell it. Could take months either way. Public records will tell the next chapter. New filings at the L.A. County Recorder’s office. Any word from the Edition brand or Witkoff on management or a sale.
For now it’s business as usual on the ground. The ownership fight is happening in filings, not in the lobby.
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Interesting appearance of Steve Witkoff in West Hollywood real estate ventures. Actually if one follows the dots from Ian Schrager through Steve Rubell and Roy Cohen it includes DJT, all part if the same club.
Wow another hotel fail in West Hollywood. The costs of doing business in the city are even impacting the large brands. Rumor is Ramada is soon too once their lease is up…Edition will probably all become condos
Condos would be a great use! We obviously don’t need more hotels and having actual residents living on the Strip may be the answer to its’ revival.
Reintroducing high-stakes card rooms to the Strip would also help as a tourist draw.The Sunset Strip gained its first fame in the early 20th century as a gambling mecca like Havana and Monte Carlo. The mob made millions from their skim off the movie moguls’ gambling in back rooms at Cafe Trocadero, Ciro’s, Cafe La Boheme, the Clover Club, Old Colony and dozens of other nightspots back then. Legalize it now and the hoteliers, hotel workers and the city could profit.
Condos would be fine. I doubt it would cause additional traffic problems. Most owners would be non-residents. An apartment there would be pied-a-terre for the ultra wealthy. You know, a parking spot for honeypots and mistresses, etc. A place to for the children to stay while they’re attending UCLA and paying out-of-state tuition. Better than another luxury hotel that can’t fill the rooms at ridiculous rates.