Radisson Hotel at UTMC to be auctioned

Jon Chavez, The Blade, Toledo, Ohio
·2 min read

May 18—For the second time in six years the Radisson Hotel at the University of Toledo Medical Center is going on the auction block.

A three-day absolute auction starts at noon on Tuesday for the six-story, 212-room hotel located on the west perimeter of UTMC's campus.

Bids start at $1 and the first bid to reach the seller's reserve price will be declared the winner. Ten-X, a California commercial real estate company, is handling the auction and another commercial firm, CBRE Inc., has been marketing the property and conducting tours.

The university owns the land that the hotel sits on. But the current owner of the hotel building is a limited liability company called SF IV Toledo Hotel, LLC. It is a Delaware company with a notice address of 767 Fifth Avenue, 12th floor, New York, NY.

An authorized representative is listed as Salman A. Akbar Khan. The company has been involved with the hotel since February 2015, which was shortly after the last time it was sold at auction.

The online notice speaks of the "strategic location" and "limited competition" of the hotel, which was built in 1988 and had a long affiliation with Hilton Hotels.

But over the years the hotel — which got a prestige boost in 2012 when President Obama came to Toledo and stayed at the Radisson — has had trouble staying financially stable.

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It has been sold at least three times.

In 2014 it fell into receivership when owners Amazing Grace Hotels LLC, which bought the hotel in May, 2007 defaulted on their $9.3 million loan. It lost its Hilton affiliation in the process.

In January 2015 it was sold at auction to Stabilis Capital Management, a New York City investment firm that agreed to pay $5.4 million for the hotel at the former Medical College of Ohio.

The hotel affiliated with the Radisson chain shortly afterward and Stabilis invested $6 million bringing it up to Radisson's standards with a number of upgrades, including 39-inch HD televisions, new beds, and new lobby decor, furniture, and lighting.

When Mr. Obama came to stay in September, 2012, the president and security occupied the hotel's top three floors. Mr. Obama used its fitness facility to exercise and stayed in the hotel's Presidential Suite, which was renamed the Obama Presidential Suite by the then-owner, Grace Chojnowski-Kellogg.

First Published May 18, 2021, 7:00am