HARTFORD, CT— Affiliates of Waterford Group LLC, together with several partners doing business as 315 Trumbell Street Associates LLC, have closed on financing for the Hilton Hartford, recently acquired by the partnership. The partnership, which also includes Michigan-based Slavik, Inc.; Connecticut-based Albermarle Hotel Associates Inc.; and developer Glenn Jette, is renovating the 392-room property for $31- million. “Fleet Bank of America provided us with the financing. It’s a $20- million loan,” said Len Wolman, chairman/CEO, of Waterford Group “We’ve finished up the designs and we’re getting ready to really get construction moving,” Wolman said. Thus far, the building, which is connected to the Hartford Civic Center via a skywalk, has been gutted and interior design boards for FF&E by The Gettys Group have been approved by Hilton (See Eye On Design on p. 16). Architectural design is being handled by William Tabler and Associates. When finished in early 2005, the property will feature an estimated 14,000 square feet of meeting space, a full-service, street-level restaurant designed by cb5 Restaurant Group, a lobby coffee bar, concierge level, high-speed Internet and Wi-Fi access and an indoor swimming pool. Waterford Hotel Group Inc. will manage the property. The project also gives Waterford an even greater presence in its home state, and particularly in Hartford. where it has a full-service Marriott adjacent to the convention center opening in summer 2005 and is the master developer of the 33-acre Adriaen’s Landing project. The partnership also has a 120-room Residence Inn in Hartford. “Adding 409 rooms to the market we felt comfortable with when we moved forward with the initial phase of the 700-room Marriott that is designed for Adrian’s Landing. One of the concerns we had is— it’s a big convention center with 140,000 square feet of exhibit space, 65,000 square feet of meeting space— how do [we]get enough inventory of rooms to really service all of these groups? Now, with us purchasing the Hilton, what we feel is we’ll have 920 rooms in downtown Hartford: 800 four-diamond rooms between the Hilton and the Marriott, and that will really give us enough inventory to service the groups we need to,” said Wolman. Financing the deal had some challenges, noted the CEO. “Many lenders had to get ‘comfortable’ with Hartford and understand where it’s at in its renaissance,” he said of the area that has been retrenching economically. The partnership worked with its relationship banks, originally getting a commitment from Webster Bank for construction and minperm financing; however, the financial group could not match the interest rate and other terms and conditions offered by Fleet, which eventually issued the loan. “Normally, we won’t close on a project until we really have all our ducks in a row. In this particular case, we ended up closing on the project then finding our financing afterwards,” said Wolman. The partnership came to the project, which is on a 99-year land lease owned by Hartford, after the city earlier this year exercised its right of first refusal in a pending $6 million acquisition deal with The Procaccianti Group. “The city had encouraged anyone who wanted to get involved in this project to talk with the unions about the hotel possibly being operated union in the future.” Wolman noted. Subsequently, the city issued RFPs and the partnership was one of five groups to respond, eventually winning the bid. One of the key concerns that put the property in the local spotlight was the need to shutter the hotel in order to renovate it. “We assumed we’d be able to renovate the project while it was open and operating. As a result, we ended up signing an assumption agreement, as did some of the other respondents, with the union on this project,” said Wolman. Later provided with more details, he discovered Hilton had a mandate that all its properties that did not have a new front-office system had to have it in by
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