ST. LOUIS — A bad Cardinals season. No TV or air-conditioning. And few major conventions.
Downtown’s troubled Hotel Indigo is already in foreclosure. Now its court-appointed manager says the hotel struggled to book rooms this summer, and is asking the courts to let it auction off the property.
Expenses at the hotel, at North Broadway and Olive Street, also soared with a high employee turnover that caused “excessive overtime,†according to new court documents.
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Hotel Indigo, whose owner failed to make debt payments, was among the nearly dozen new hotels announced for opening in downtown ºüÀêÊÓƵ just as the pandemic hit the region in 2020. Plans for several of those hotels stalled or fell apart, while others were delayed. Some are recovering, but more slowly compared to the overall region as business travel has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, hospitality experts have said.
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The dual-branded Home2 Suites/Tru by Hilton, in the historic Shell building at Locust Street and North 13th Street downtown, is also in foreclosure. And its court-appointed manager, too, is struggling with a turnaround:
The manager has repeatedly told the ºüÀêÊÓƵ Circuit Court about its challenges with getting the property’s former management companies to turn over all of the documents and bank accounts needed to operate.
Equis Hotels, the receiver for the dual-branded hotel, recently said that one of the management companies, Everwood Inc., withdrew $70,000 from one of the bank accounts for the hotel and did not disclose either the existence of the bank account or the withdrawal.
Equis also told the court that another property manager, Aimbridge Hospitality, had mismanaged the hotel: homeless people were allowed to “excessively†loiter in the lobby, the electronic lock systems on guest rooms were not properly set up, and the city of ºüÀêÊÓƵ issued a public nuisance notice for “unruly behavior†at the hotel.
Everwood and Equis attorneys did not respond to requests for comment. Aimbridge’s attorneys, with the Clayton firm Armstrong Teasdale, noted that Aimbridge said in a new court filing that it denied mismanagement and had not been paid by Equis as it should have been.
At Hotel Indigo, fewer baseball fans booked rooms as the Cardinals had one of their worst seasons in years. Only one “major†convention was held at the nearby America’s Center that could have brought business travelers. Worse still, the hotel went without air conditioning for a time and spent weeks without television services, according to court documents.
The hotel made $248,097 in revenue in July, missing its projected target by $35,000. August was projected to miss by $107,000, and September was also forecast to be behind, though no value was disclosed.
The court-appointed manager, Midas Hospitality, has asked ºüÀêÊÓƵ Circuit Court to let it auction Hotel Indigo through Ten-X, an online auctioneer, with help from commercial real estate firm CBRE, which will market the property.
Midas expects to list the hotel at $8 million. That request is still pending before the court.
Midas’ attorney did not respond to a request for comment.