Holiday Inn Downtown sold for $15 million -- almost twice assessment
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By JEAN ORTIZ/Lincoln Journal Star
Though nearly $4 million in renovations at the Holiday Inn Downtown are coming to a close, it appears the changes at downtown’s oldest high-rise hotel are only beginning.
The hotel, built in the early 1970s, has a new owner, a new general manager and may soon go by a new name, hotel officials confirmed this week.
Vesta Lincoln Partners closed on a deal Aug. 23 to buy the hotel for $15.15 million from Columbus Properties of New Orleans, according to the Lancaster County Assessor/Register of Deeds Office. In 1998, the hotel sold for $7.76 million. It’s current assessment is $8.76 million.
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1972 — former site of the Lincoln Hotel at Ninth and P streets was cleared to make way for the Hilton Hotel
1974 — Hilton Hotel opens
1992 — franchise ends with Hilton, became known as the Lincoln Hotel for a few months before joining the Ramada Hotel franchise network
1999 — Hotel officially becomes Holiday Inn. Some $2.7 million was spent on interior renovations as well as to paint the building’s exterior beige. It had been white.
Source: Lincoln Journal Star archives
Rick Takach is listed as the manager of the limited liability corporation, according to the Nebraska Secretary of State’s Office. He also is president and CEO of Vesta Hospitality Group of Vancouver, Wash., which has managed the property for more than a year.
Takach declined to disclose the terms of the sale, saying only that he paid more than he planned.
“It was expensive,” he said.
Columbus Properties officials were unavailable for comment.
The hotel has gotten an extensive facelift in the last several months that brought new flat-panel televisions, wall treatments, bathroom fixtures and other amenities to guest rooms and some major upgrades as well to the ballroom.
But Takach has plans for more.
A second round of renovations is slated for this fall, putting $2.5 million into the property with a focus on the building’s exterior. Lincoln-based Davis Design is working with Takach on the plans to upgrade the exterior of the building and give it more of a Haymarket feel, he said.
He also is considering adding an elevator and renovating the lower level and meeting rooms.
“We’re just going to bring the hotel up to date,” he said.
And that’s not all.
Takach is evaluating a possible franchise change to convert the hotel into a Crowne Plaza. That would call for another $1.5 million in upgrades focusing on details from bedding in guest rooms to furniture in the meeting spaces.
Franchise changes are not unknown at the site that opened more than three decades ago as a Hilton. It would be the fifth name the hotel has operated under since the 1970s.
Takach said he sees nothing but potential for the hotel, which is what attracted him to buying it — his first Nebraska holding.
“We like the market. We like the hotel,” he said. “We feel good about Lincoln and its long-term prospects.”
Locally, he’s depending on general manager Dennis Havranek, hired last month, to help carry through his vision.
“I think he’s going to be a good fit with our company,” Takach said.
Havranek, 48, has a long history in the hotel industry. The Yutan native got his start in hotels at age 16, when he was hired to pick up cigarette butts in the parking lot of what then was a Sheraton Hotel in southwest Omaha.
Most recently he managed the Hilton Garden Inn in Omaha, he said.
The Holiday Inn’s sale was in flux when he came aboard and that was part of the attraction, Havranek said.
“I really love working for an owner that isn’t a huge company,” he said. “If I want a decision made, it takes a phone call.”
The recently-completed renovation position the hotel well to compete with the Embassy Suites and The Cornhusker Marriott, he said.
The Holiday Inn, which has long catered to traveling sales people and families, is now in a better position to attract conferences and other big events as well, he said.
The hotel has booked 84 wedding receptions for 2007, compared to about 17 four years ago, said Havranek, who called the turn-around phenomenal.
Havranek succeeds Joel Schossow, who had held the position for about two and a half years. Schossow, along with a Kansas partner who is a long-time associate, has gone on to start his own hospitality company called Gemstone Hospitality. The Lincoln-based company is readying to close on its first property, an Econolodge in Lawrence, Kan., Schossow said.
He was let go from the Holiday Inn, he said because of his starting up his own business, he said.
“I was spending time working on my own business when maybe I should have been spending time on Holiday Inn business,” he said, adding that he doesn’t blame hotel officials for making the decision they did.
Takach said only that the hotel needed a leadership change to take it in a different direction. The physical changes planned for the hotel and the leadership change, however, were not related, he added.
“Sometimes it’s good for a change and that’s where we’re at,” he said.
He called Schossow talented and a “solid citizen, an honest person” and said Schossow didn’t do anything that would be considered inappropriate.
Schossow and Vesta have not cut their professional ties. Schossow is set to manage a Vesta property in Palm Springs, Calif. on a short-term basis.
Reach Jean Ortiz at 473-7107 or jortiz@journalstar.com
On the Net:
Vesta Hospitality Group, http://www.vestahospitality.com
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