Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Perspective who wrote (180965)	2/1/2009 5:01:27 PM
From: ChanceIs	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 306849

Adam’s Mark sells at a (50%) discount By Jonathan Epstein NEWS BUSINESS REPORTER >>I took BC's lead and compiled a nice restaurant short watch list on my SS Pro. This story was linked to SBUX (I threw in the coffee companies under restaurants....GMCR, PEET, and SBUX). I don't understand the hotel food chain...but this nutcase wants to put a SBUX in.<<< Buffalo’s Adam’s Mark Hotel has been sold for $7.5 million, less than half the price it sold for a year ago. Visions Hotels of Corning took over the 486- room downtown hotel from Chartres Lodging Group LLC of San Francisco, which acquired the hotel last February for $18.6 million. The hotel had been on the market for about nine months and garnered a lot of interest, but Visions’ was the highest bid Chartres received, said Visions partner Arun “Andy” Patel. Patel said Visions now plans to spend $10 million to $12 million over the next 18 months to convert the Adam’s Mark into a Crowne Plaza, and “make it the premier hotel in upstate New York.” Crowne Plaza is part of the InterContinental Hotels Group that also owns the Intercontinental, Holiday Inn, and Hotel Indigo brands. Plans call for creating a “nice” restaurant and sports bar, and bringing in a coffee shop like Starbucks. Visions also expects to add new jobs. “That’s our goal. That’s our aim. We are going to be very, very focused on making this the best Crowne Plaza,” Patel said. The only potential glitch, he admitted, is financing. M&T Bank Corp. is the company’s lender for the transaction, and has worked with it in the past on other hotels, so Patel is hoping the relationship will continue. “The business climate is a little rough right now, so the financing of the renovations will be our biggest challenge,” he said. “But we are local and we are committed, so we’ll give it our best shot.” This is Visions’ second push into the Buffalo market, after buying the much smaller, 146-room Comfort Suites at 601 Main St. last March. But in a twist, it even paid more for that hotel — $7.8 million — than the much larger Adam’s Mark. That’s in part because the Adam’s Mark is a much bigger hotel with higher expenses, and it doesn’t have a strong national brand, Patel said. There’s only one other Adam’s Mark. Founded in 1996, Visions operates 17 other hotels in Central New York and the Southern Tier, including in Corning, Elmira, Bath, Rochester, Olean, Cortland and Utica. Except for a Holiday Inn in Rochester and now the Adam’s Mark, all are limited-service hotels.