JOHNSTOWN, PA? While some regional lodging companies seek to saturate their markets, Crown American Hotels? at 27 mid-Atlantic properties and holding? is casting a conservative eye on future expansion, taking a breath from several years of rapid growth and significant changes in executive management. A year ago, the CAH staff was recovering from the death of Board Chairman Frank Pasquerilla. A decades-long presence, Pasquerilla had laid the foundation for the present-day company in 1965, building his first Holiday Inn in Indiana, PA. He created a hotel division as part of Crown American Corp., which he owned and which specialized in shopping malls. After years of growth in both divisions, in 1993 the shopping malls were spun into a REIT?Crown American Realty Trust, and Crown American Hotels became its own company, which is still privately held by the Pasquerilla family. Almost by design, however, several weeks before his demise, Pasquerilla kept his reputation as a visionary businessman intact by making several key appointments within CAH. While his son, Mark, has since replaced then-CEO Marlin Havener, who retired, Pasquerilla?s promotion of Gary Thirkell to president kept a steady rudder on the corporate ship in the ensuing months. And it?s Thirkell?s commitment to smooth sailing that?s responsible for the company?s current strategies. ?We?ve just come off a fairly aggressive acquisition plan where we added seven hotels to the portfolio over the last several years, and with the way the hotel business has gone with its overbuilding, we decided to step back, not acquire any hotels at this time and concentrate on strengthening some of the properties we have acquired and reflagged,? said Thirkell. Stability could very well be the hallmark of CAH. For example, Thirkell has been with the company since 1976; James Bambrey, senior vp/operations, started in 1979; the executive staff averages 15 years of service. It?s also a company that?s kept every property it?s ever acquired, although brand flags have changed from time to time. It presently has franchise affiliations with Bass Hotels & Resorts (Holiday Inn/Holiday Inn Express), Choice Hotels International (Comfort Inn/Suites), Marriott (Courtyard by Marriott), Starwood Hotels & Resorts (Four Points by Sheraton) and Wyndham (Wyndham Garden Hotels). The majority of properties (15) fly Bass franchise flags, which would be CAH?s first pick in a repositioning, according to Thirkell. ?The contribution on the reservations system from Holiday Inn is pretty substantial. It?s probably our best contributor,? he said, noting, however, ?There?s not a lot of franchises available in Holiday Inn. There?s a lot of them out there and it?s a saturated market.? In 1999, the company produced $100 million-plus in revenues, and keeping CAH above the saturation level of over-development is key to Thirkell. With properties in seven states? Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee? that?s enough ?critical mass? for now, he said. ?We?re probably going to stay at 27 hotels for three to four years before we start acquiring again. We have no number that we want to achieve within so many years.? As a company, CAH has found the best strategy for building its portfolio is not to build. Rather, the company acquires substandard or underperforming properties, invests capital, reflags them if possible and ramps them up. ?That?s pretty much been our focus,? said Thirkell. ?We probably haven?t built a property in 10 years.? Although CAH in 1997 took a stab at adaptive reuse, turning a Pittsburgh office building that had once been a hotel into a 198-room Wyndham Garden Hotel for $13 million, Thirkell expected acquisitions to remain the strategy of choice into the future. That is interesting considering the company trickled down from a masonry contractor. Although CAH had its beginnings in 1965, its roots stretch farther back to the early 1950s, when founder Frank Pasqu
