Monty Bennett Gets Green Light for San Antonio Hotel Buy

Monty Bennett’s Ashford Hospitality Trust is taking over a conversion project in downtown San Antonio just days after another Bennett-backed REIT responded to a stock slide by putting itself up for sale. 

A federal judge gave Dallas-based Ashford the green light to take over the conversion of the former CPS headquarters in a $32 million cash deal, the San Antonio Business Journal reported. 

Houston-based Blueprint Hospitality bought the office building at 145 Navarro Street from CPS Energy in 2022. It planned to convert it into a 243-key Marriott Autograph Collection hotel called El Portal. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February in the face of mounting liens and a loan default. 

Contractors and suppliers have filed about $8 million in liens on the property, prompting the lender Austin-based WM Capital Partners, which provided a $14.4 million loan, to ask the judge to take the property out of the owner’s hands. The deal allows Blueprint principals to retain an indirect ownership stake and settles the claims regarding the property. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez wrote that all parties involved reached agreement in good faith in a Sept. 3 filing. 

Ashford is taking on the project as it faces its own financial obstacles. 

A $590 million loan backed by 18 Ashford-owned hotels was transferred to special servicing after Ashford defaulted on its balloon payment and failed to refinance, Morningstar Credit reported. 

Meanwhile, Braemar, which Bennett founded and chairs, put itself up for sale at the end of August in a bid to save shareholder value. The REIT’s stock shares tumbled to about a tenth of what they were in 2013, and it is more than $1.1 billion in debt, with $473 million in stock, the Dallas Morning News reported. 

The distress blow follows a blistering proxy battle last year that tried to remove Bennett from the boards of Ashford and Braemar.

— Eric Weilbacher

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