Oklahoma Hotel Trio Lands on Auction Block

Frontier Bank has hired Sheldon Good & Co. Auctions LLC for the sale of Oklahoma hotels in Elk City, Clinton and Weatherford. The sale is set for May 23 at the Four Points Sheraton in Oklahoma City. The auctioneer says the only information available about the hotel's ownership is that all three were owned by one person. A name and address are not available since the bank is the legal seller.

Alan R. Kravets, president of Sheldon Good, tells GlobeSt.com that hotel properties coming to the auction block are up nearly 50% from last year. He didn't have hard numbers, but the Oklahoma sale comes on the heels of another triple auction of Midwestern hotel properties. In recent months, the firm has auctioned about $100 million of hospitality/resort properties in Illinois, Missouri, Michigan and Indiana.

Kravets says hotel lenders, though sympathetic to borrowers, are turning to auction houses as "a disposition strategy of first choice" in foreclosures and bankruptcies alike. "Any hotel owner that is highly leveraged is in trouble today," he says, voicing the same concerns as CEOs of the nation's leading hotel chains. Many lenders with "problem" properties are getting creative to keep borrowers in place, but it doesn't always work out, as evidenced by the Oklahoma properties now being groomed for sale.

The Elk City property is a 45-room Econo Lodge situated on one acre at 108 Meadow Ridge, off Interstate 40 west of Oklahoma City. Clinton's 92-room Red Roof Inn is set on 8.8 acres at 2140 W. Gary Blvd., also off Interstate 40 west of OKC. The hotel was built in 1970 and renovated in 1999. The buyer must reapply for the Econo Lodge and Red Roof brandings. The 26-room Travel Inn is situated at 3140 E. Main St. in Weatherford, another one-acre holding along Interstate 40 west.