Failed JQH hotel sold at auction

A failed Colorado hotel of John Q. Hammons Hotels & Resorts has been sold at auction for roughly $22.2 million.

Tulsa, Okla., construction firm Flintco Inc., the general contractor for the incomplete 300-room Renaissance Hotel in Colorado Springs, Colo., picked up the development during a late October foreclosure sale, according to an article posted last week by the Tri-Lakes Tribune, a weekly publication.

Flintco plans to continue construction on the hotel and sell it off to a real estate or hotel business.

Construction on the hotel stalled in October 2009 when JQH Hotels put the project on hold, causing Flintco to file a $29.3 million mechanic's lien, which was later reduced to $24.6 million. In June, a 4th Judicial District Court judge ordered that the 11-story hotel be sold at a foreclosure sale to satisfy Flintco's legal claim.

In July, JQH Hotels stepped back from the project, with officials saying the move was largely financial in nature.

"Mr. Hammons and the development team started building it without the financing in place. He was just paying for it out of pocket," Justin Harris, JQH Hotels senior vice president and general counsel, told Springfield Business Journal at the time. "Then the economy trashed and funding for that kind of project disappeared."

The development is roughly 70 percent complete. Harris told SBJ in July he was under the impression that the Colorado Springs hotel marked the first time any of Hammons' companies had failed to complete a hotel already under construction.[[In-content Ad]]