For more than two decades, one Cincinnati insurance company owned both the hotels and the boat slips at Charleston Harbor Resort & Marina in Mount Pleasant. Now two companies do.
American Financial Group Inc. said Aug. 31 that it had completed the sale of the waterfront property at Patriots Point. Procaccianti Companies, a Rhode Island real estate investment firm, and its joint venture partner, Rugger Capital, bought the 217-room resort, the companies announced Sept. 9. Suntex Marinas of Dallas bought the adjacent Charleston Harbor Marina, which has more than 450 slips.
Procaccianti paid $112.5 million for the resort, according to public real estate records cited by The Post and Courier, and Suntex paid $70 million for the marina, the newspaper reported. That adds up to $182.5 million.
The two properties will now be owned and run separately. TPG Hotels & Resorts, Procaccianti’s Dallas-based hospitality management affiliate, will manage the resort, which includes two hotels, Harborside and The Beach Club. Suntex will own and operate the marina.
What the new owners plan
Procaccianti will explore “a comprehensive renovation and repositioning” of the resort in the coming months, according to the companies’ announcement. They did not give a cost or a schedule, but said the new owners “intend to invest meaningfully in the properties in the years ahead.”
“The combination of a premier waterfront location, strong operating fundamentals, multiple demand generators, and meaningful opportunities for value creation makes this an exceptionally compelling acquisition in one of the country’s strongest hospitality markets,” Robert Leven, Procaccianti’s chief investment officer, said in the announcement.
John Phelan, founder and chairman of Rugger Capital, said the partners see “meaningful potential to add value to the property, attract even more visitors to the nearby Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum, and expand our programmatic relationship with TPG Hotels & Resorts.”
Suntex CEO Bryan Redmond said the companies had created “a solution where the separately owned and operated marina and resort complement one another and strengthen the overall waterfront destination.” Suntex said its portfolio now tops 100 marinas in 17 states.
General manager Oliver Roosken said the resort will stay open and operating during the ownership change, The Post and Courier reported.
A sale 18 months in the making
American Financial, the parent of Great American Insurance Group, first announced agreements to sell the resort and marina in March 2025. Those agreements gave the buyers 60 days of due diligence to walk away, and the deal was called off in June 2025, The Post and Courier reported.
Co-CEO Craig Lindner told investors on April 30 that the company had struck new “definitive agreements” to sell the property, the newspaper reported.
American Financial said it expects to book about $125 million in pretax core operating earnings from the sale, or $1.20 a share after taxes, subject to final accounting. The property was owned equally by the parent company and its Great American Insurance Co. subsidiary.
American Financial bought what became Charleston Harbor Resort & Marina in 2002, according to the company. It paid $17.5 million, through its Brothers Property unit, to buy out the original development group, and it built the 92-room Beach Club next to the original hotel in 2016, The Post and Courier reported. The newspaper said the resort opened nearly 30 years ago.
The state owns the land
The buyers did not purchase the ground under the resort. The state-run Patriots Point Development Authority owns it and began leasing the roughly 35 acres that make up the resort and marina in 1996 under several 99-year agreements, The Post and Courier reported.
The rent totals about $3 million a year, money the authority uses to maintain the Navy warships at its neighboring museum, according to the newspaper. The authority will also collect a 1% fee on the lease transfers, or nearly $1.83 million.
More rooms next door
The resort has new neighbors. Bennett Hospitality held a ribbon cutting April 22 for a 100-room Residence Inn by Marriott in its Ferry Wharf development, on the edge of Patriots Point, The Post and Courier reported. The company has three more lodgings planned there under a 20-year master plan, and president Jack Bennett said infrastructure work on the first hotel in that Patriots Annex project was expected to begin by the end of 2026, according to the newspaper.
The buyers are betting on a market that has held up well. Charleston County had the highest April hotel occupancy of 18 comparison markets for the fourth year in a row in 2026, at 82.5%, and was the only one of them at 80% or higher, according to a spring quarterly update from Explore Charleston, the area’s tourism marketing agency.
