Lake Wales asks judge to nullify 2010 deal, return ownership of Walesbilt Hotel to city
Lake Wales has asked a judge to return ownership of the Walesbilt Hotel to the city.
Kevin Ashley, a lawyer representing Lake Wales and its Community Redevelopment Agency, filed a motion for final judgment Monday that asks Circuit Judge Jennifer Swenson to rescind a 2010 agreement giving ownership of the historic structure to a developer who promised to restore the long-vacant building.
Circuit Judge William D. Sites, who originally presided over a lawsuit that Lake Wales filed in 2022, granted the city’s motion for partial summary judgment in March. Lake Wales sought the judgment based on two of the 14 counts in its complaint against Dixie Walesbilt LLC and its manager, Raymond E. Brown.
That motion alleged that Brown used fraudulent tactics in his bid for the contract to redevelop the 10-story hotel, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Ashley focused on two of Brown’s claims: that a supposed associate was the main financial backer of the project and that Dixie-Walesbilt LLC had already begun pre-sales of units and was on target to meet its sales goals.
The motion cited Brown’s statements in a deposition from a separate lawsuit in which he acknowledged that the supposed partner had contributed no money and that Dixie-Walesbilt had not pre-sold any of the 40 planned residential units.
City Commissioner Robin Gibson, the chair of the Lake Wales CRA, briefly discussed the new motion during Tuesday night’s commission meeting. He said that the city had the options of either seeking rescission of the agreement with Dixie Walesbilt LLC or pursuing an award of damages.
The CRA’s executive committee, which consists of the five city commissioners, decided that asking the judge to nullify the contract was the better option.
“And when the contract is rescinded, the parties are put back to where they were to begin with,” Gibson said. “Thus, we own the hotel.”
In the motion, Ashley wrote: “Because of the unique nature of each piece of real property, in this case an almost one hundred-year-old structure that sits as the centerpiece of the City of Lake Wales, DWL’s fraud upon The City and its citizens cannot be remedied by money damages.”
Gibson noted that Lake Wales can still seek to recover its attorney fees, and in the motion Ashley requested that Swenson reserve jurisdiction for the awarding of those fees.
That would require a separate hearing from the consideration of the motion to rescind the contract, Gibson said.
Brown’s lawyer, A. Brent Geohagan, did not immediately respond Wednesday to an email requesting comment.
The history of the Walesbilt
The building at 5 Park Ave. W. opened in 1927, and its original owners included Florida Gov. John W. Martin and a consortium of Hollywood actors, among them Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson, according to historical reports. The structure, known in the 1980s as the Hotel Grand, was sold at auction in 1995 and closed.
The building on the west edge of downtown Lake Wales has remained vacant for decades.
In his redevelopment proposal, Brown said he would restore and renovate the hotel, converting the former hotel rooms into 40 residential units and turning the first floor into retail space. Brown did some restoration of the building’s interior, as previously documented by The Ledger, and in 2011 he told a reporter that he had spent $1.5 million on the project.
In the motion, Ashley wrote that Dixie Walesbilt LLC halted all work on the hotel in early 2020. The planned residentials, retail space, a health club and parking all remain uncompleted, he wrote. The city notified the developer in writing the following year of multiple breaches of the redevelopment agreement, giving Brown the chance to remedy them, but none were cured, Ashley wrote.
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The vacant building serves as a counterpoint to an array of downtown revitalization projects being pursued through Lake Wales Connected, a multiyear plan adopted in 2021. Those include a redesigned streetscape on Park Avenue, adjacent to the Walesbilt.
Lake Wales officials have not said what the city might do if it regains ownership of the Walesbilt Hotel.
Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Lake Wales asks judge to return ownership of Walesbilt Hotel to city
