Saturday, November 30, 2013 COLUMBIA DAILY TRIBUNE www.columbiatribune.com 3
February opening is set for Best Western Plus
A
fter years of inactivity, things are finally moving on the former Comfort Inn at 2904 Clark
Lane. The owner, George Pate, said he hopes to have the new hotel — a Best Western Plus — open in February. “I had to do a total renovation,” he said. Pate also owns the Fairfield Inn & Suites just off Clark Lane at 1115 Woodland Springs Court, and he is a partner in the Holiday Inn at the Lake of the Woods exit. The Best Western Plus will have 80 rooms and an indoor pool, Pate said. “Once it’s done, it will be like a brand-new hotel,” he said. The hotel has been closed for about a year and a half, and it stopped flying the Comfort Inn flag around 2007, Pate said. Pate recently managed to get financing for the property after several years of issues, including construction liens, tax liens and even a wrongful death lawsuit from the family of a manager who was murdered at the former Comfort Inn property in 2007. The wrongful death lawsuit against Pate and the hotel companies was filed by the family of Cynthia White, who was murdered by Dwight Hayes.
from 131 different parties — many of them retirement accounts, living trusts and individuals — with small stakes in the project.
cash in hand
Hayes had raped another clerk at the hotel, when it was the Fairfield Inn, just two weeks before. That suit was settled last year. Terms of the settlement are confidential. Several construction liens that had been placed on the property were lifted over the summer, and Pate appears to have caught up on back taxes. There also was some litigation from a former lender, Pate said, and finally, he got it all settled and “started all over again.” In August, Pate transferred the hotel from Tiger Hospitality Services LLC to Columbia Hospitality Services LLC, and he used the property, along with some other property in Taney County, to secure a $4.95 million loan from a private lending firm. The financing was packaged by a Utah firm, Private Capital Group. It includes financing
Collegiate Housing Partners has closed on a $25 million financing package for its West Campus student housing development. The company, which won city rezoning in July for a six-story student housing development on the south side of Conley Avenue just west of Fifth Street, plans to begin construction next year and open in 2015. On Halloween, it purchased the rental houses that occupy the 1.2-acre strip near the University of Missouri power plant and Mark Twain residence hall. The Klifton Altis Trust, Ben and Nancy Galloway, and Lowell and Dassel Schoengarth owned the rental houses. At the same time, under Columbia Properties II LLC, Collegiate Housing Partners inked a financing agreement with BMO Harris Bank that secures as much as $25 million in credit, including an initial loan of $19.46 million. The firm is planning a 100-unit, 350-bed complex with
ground-level parking. When Collegiate Housing Partners first came to town, it looked at purchasing the Niedermeyer building at Cherry and Tenth streets, which contains some sections that are considered the oldest construction in town. A community outcry and threats of a moratorium on downtown demolitions led to a switch to the West Campus property.
kentucky home
The family that has made a name for itself developing the “Brookside” brand of student housing in downtown Columbia is looking to Bowling Green, Ky., and Western Kentucky University for its latest projects. The Odle family, which has built more than 1,000 student housing beds in its Brookside Downtown and Brookside on College projects, is working on three projects in Bowling Green. One, a 474-bed student housing development on the edge of the WKU campus, will be similar to the Brookside development at College Avenue and Walnut Street, Jon Odle said in an email. That project is in a Tax Increment Financing district, the
Bowling Green Daily News reported. Like here, the Odles also are looking beyond the student housing market. Their company, Trittenbach Development, is working on a 14,000-squarefoot “urban retail” building as well as 40 to 50 market-rate apartments built into a commercial wrap on a new public parking garage in downtown Bowling Green, Odle wrote. Locally, Trittenbach has shifted from student housing. While it’s finishing the last phase of development at College and Walnut, which will add another 230 beds to the roughly 500 at the complex, it also has started work on a regional retail, office and residential development at Discovery Parkway and Highway 63. It scrapped plans for a large student housing component on the site, citing worries that the market was being overbuilt. Odle said they’re looking to Bowling Green for the same reason: The company reckons the student housing market in Columbia is oversupplied by about 3,000 beds. Jacob Barker is the Tribune’s business reporter. Reach him at 573-815-1722 or jbarker@columbiatribune.com.
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