AJ Capital Partners

Adventurous Journeys Capital Partners (AJ Capital Partners) is a private real estate company based in Chicago that owns and operates lodging accommodations.

AJ Capital Partners was founded by Ben Weprin, the current CEO, in 2008. Its strategy is to build a portfolio of hotels and resorts, most notably, the company's in-house brand, Graduate Hotels, a collection of boutique design-driven hotels in university-anchored markets across the US. Other projects have included restorations of existing hotels and development of new properties, several located in Chicago, such as Chicago Athletic Association, Soho House Chicago, Thompson Chicago and Hotel Lincoln.

It also owns or has owned or invested in historic hotels and resorts, including the Pontchartrain Hotel in New Orleans, Isle de France in St. Barth and Malliouhana, part of Auberge Resorts, in Anguilla, with several locations, primarily in the U.S.

In 2012, AJ Capital Partners collaborated with Soho House Group to transform a vacant rubber belt factory located in Chicago's West Loop into a Soho House, an urban, members only club and hotel, which opened in 2014.

In 2015, AJ Capital Partners were the developers in restoring the 130-year-old Chicago Athletic Association into a public hotel. Weprin’s investment partner for the $150 million project included financier John Pritzker. The company also owned the Hotel Lincoln in Chicago, which was sold to Jordache Enterprises for a reported $70 million in 2016.

AJ Capital Partners launched the Graduate Hotels division in 2014. The name comes from the company's plan to develop boutique hotels in university town markets across the country. The hotels are intended to cater to college students and their families and are located near universities. As of 2017, there are nine hotels in the division located in Athens, Georgia; Tempe, Arizona; Madison, Wisconsin; Charlottesville, Virginia; Oxford, Mississippi; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Berkeley, California; Lincoln, Nebraska and Richmond, Virginia, with the brand's tenth hotel scheduled to open winter 2017 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In the first quarter of 2017, the brand announced plans to expand to Seattle, Washington and Bloomington, Indiana by 2018, as well as a partnership with Cornell University to open a location on Roosevelt Island, New York in 2019. The hotel group announced additional plans of expansion to New Haven, Connecticut and Columbus, Ohio in September 2017.

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