Council votes tonight on $3.2 million hotel deal

CEDAR RAPIDS - If City Council members approve the Crowne Plaza Five Seasons Hotel's $3.2 million purchase price tonight, the stage will be set for $20 million to $25 million worth of renovations.

City Manager Jeff Pomeranz said the city's purchase of the hotel is critical to the $75 million rebuilding of the attached U.S. Cellular Center into the new Cedar Rapids Convention Complex.

'It just needs a facelift,' he said. 'It needs a partner working with the convention facility. Now we're moving forward with those plans.' Hotel owner 350 1st Avenue Holdings LLC will work with operator PHC Dallas to shutter the building so demolition of sections of it can begin in March. The hotel should reopen in the fall of 2012, a month or two before the convention center opens.

'You really have to fix up the whole block to make this really work,' said City Council member and mayor pro tem Monica Vernon. Mayor Ron Corbett is out of town.

The closing in Febru­ary will put about 140 hotel employees out of work, general manager Debra Stout said.

'We knew it was going to come at some point with the renovation, but we just weren't expecting it quite that early,' Stout said. She said she was gratified that most workers want to stay on through the Crowne Plaza's last day.

'I'm very excited that we have finally taken the next step and this very, very needed renovation is going to be happening,' said Stout, who has worked at the hotel for 11 years. 'It is tired, it needs a complete renovation, and it's going to get one.' She estimated that the combined complex will employ about twice the hotel's current staff.

Vernon said the city's $3.5 million insurance settlement from a fire at the former Sinclair meatpacking plant will fund the hotel's purchase. The renovation costs will be paid through 'some sort of bond, or a leasepurchase agreement,' Pomeranz said.

The city will probably continue to operate the hotel for a few years after it reopens, building a track record to boost its selling price, said John Frew of Frew Nations Group, the city's construction manager on the convention center-hotel project.

'We don't believe this will be a quick turnaround,' Frew said. But he said the city is already fielding inquiries from hotel chains interested in managing the facility when it reopens.

Dan Thies of OPN Architects said the hotel will lose 36 of its 274 rooms. Its ballroom will be demolished first, followed by a neighboring building owned by Armstrong Race Realty and an adjoining parking ramp.

Only the Roosevelt Hotel, now renovated into apartments, will remain untouched on the block.

Thies reviewed drawings of the rehabbed hotel that show a main lobby relocated to street level from the second floor, lighter exterior colors and a reworked roofline.

'We have a tired property,' Thies said. 'It needed some freshening up. The vision is an integral complex.'