As the owners of the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront continue attempts to renegotiate their loan and keep control of the Downtown hotel, a foreclosure sale scheduled for next week has been postponed until April.
U.S. Bank N.A., as trustee for the lenders, was awarded a $195.5 million judgment in August against the owners of the Hyatt and a foreclosure sale was scheduled for Jan. 11.
Circuit Judge Jack Schemer approved a motion in late December to postpone the sale until April 25.
James Riley of Rogers Towers, the attorney for the plaintiffs, said the sale was postponed to allow the borrower to continue negotiating a possible loan modification. Riley said he couldn’t comment further.
W. Braxton Gillam of Milam Howard Nicandri Dees & Gillam, attorney for the Hyatt owners, also said he could not comment.
The Hyatt has been owned since 2005 by Oxford Jacksonville Riverfront Hotel LLC, a partnership led by a San Francisco hotel investment firm called Chartres Lodging Group LLC.
Chartres President Robert Kline did not respond Tuesday to phone and email messages.
While the negotiations go on, the hotel’s operations continue as usual, said Hyatt General Manager Dan King.
“It’s not going to affect our hotel in any shape or form,” he said.
King said the hotel was nearly full over New Year’s weekend, which was something of a surprise because the two teams in the TaxSlayer.com Gator Bowl, the University of Florida and Ohio State University, did not sell all of their ticket allotments for the game.
“We had a great Gator Bowl. We actually had a lot higher occupancy rate than we had forecast,” King said.
He said the 963-room Hyatt was 95 percent full on Dec. 31 and 93 percent full on Jan. 1. Ohio State fans seemed to come in greater numbers at the last minute, King said.
King said he does not have any information on the owners’ efforts to renegotiate the mortgage on the hotel.
According to property records, Oxford Jacksonville bought the hotel at 225 E. Coastline Drive and 122 S. Newnan St. for $67 million in 2005.
The foreclosure lawsuit filed in November 2010 shows that the owners had a $150 million mortgage on the property. With interest and fees, the total judgment against the owners was $195.5 million.
The hotel originally opened as an Adam’s Mark hotel in 2001 and was owned by the Adam’s Mark chain’s parent company. The largest and newest hotel in Downtown Jacksonville served as the NFL’s headquarters for the Super Bowl in February 2005.
The sale to the Chartres partnership, with plans to convert the hotel to a Hyatt, was announced a little more than a month after the Super Bowl.
According to its website, Chartres currently has a portfolio of 13 U.S. hotels and 15 in Japan.
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