Results tagged “watergatehotel”

PB Capital Corp. agreed to purchase The Watergate Hotel today for $25 million at foreclosure auction, after submitting the one and only bid (via The Washington Business Journal and Housing Complex). Developer Monument Realty, which had to abandon its plans to renovate the hotel after lending markets collapsed, actually owed $40 million to PB Capital, making the sale something of an indicator of these strange financial times. Monument co-founder Michael Darby was reportedly on hand for the auction, and put on a brave face for the BizJo: "Am I disappointed? In some ways yes, in some ways no. We knew this was happening. I’ve lost a lot of money over time, but that’s part of what we do."

It was late summer of 2007 when the old Watergate Hotel sold off all its contents amid a massive renovation effort, with plans to reopen as something fancier, newer, or at least less shabby. But then, of course, the bottom fell out of the financial markets, and it seems the long-delayed plans for construction are finally abandoned. The hotel is going on the auction block on Tuesday, the Post reports. The hotel's owner, Monument Realty, was financed mainly be Lehman Brothers, so you can guess what happened. Alex Cooper Auctioneers will start the bidding at $1 million at their Wisconsin Ave. offices.

The public sale of anything and everything once found inside the famous Watergate Hotel, which is currently undergoing a massive renovation, began at 10 a.m. this morning, and by 11 a.m. it was already a circus of people rushing through the different floors, grabbing anything they could get their hands on while hundreds of other hopeful buyers stood waiting out in the hot sun. More than 300 people have already been let inside, and many more than that number are already in line. If you're planning on heading down to the sale today, which goes on 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays Mon.-Sat. and 12 to 5 p.m. Sundays for the next 45 days or until every item is sold, don't go with expectations of getting in and out quickly. Consider taking the rest of the day off, in fact.

>> The Watergate Hotel will be closed for the next 18 months for a $170 million renovation. [WJLA]

Paleo-futuristic indeed. I had to look that up, but the Flickr folks tell me that it "refers to outdated future-visions," and I suppose the Watergate Hotel applies to such a category. Either way, Flickr user Linus Gelber's perspective, looking up from the courtyard, and his color adjustment of a black and white exposure certainly turns this four-decade old building into something completely different.

Do you have an iron stomach like Christopher Hitchens? Do you like scotch whisky?