Company to finish building two half-complete BR hotels
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Englewood Construction of Chicago will step in to finish two stalled hotel projects that left half-completed buildings on Airline Highway and North Harrell’s Ferry.
Chuck Taylor, Englewood’s director of operations, said work will begin within the next two weeks on the buildings at 8283 Airline Highway across from The Home Depot and the tan four-story building facing Interstate 12 from the north side, just after the Sherwood Forest Boulevard exit.
The four-story hotels will be either 113 or 121 rooms and will be Value Place properties.
Taylor said Wichita, Kansas-based, Value Place touts itself as an extended-stay concept for the blue-collar crowd. Its rooms typically start at $129 per week.
That’s the same as the original plan when Oklahoma City-based Bell Hospitality Group began constructing them last year. The projects became mired in disputes with subcontractors over payment and work stopped in October. The projects were soon given to the lender, a Chicago-based bank whom Taylor said he could not disclose.
The two Baton Rouge hotels were part of a group of six nationwide that Englewood picked up when it stepped in at the lender’s request.
Taylor said Englewood has been working to straighten out the disputes with the subcontractors beginning in February, a process he said has been going smoothly.
Englewood’s job, he said, is “to finish the projects, but more importantly to dig into the financial state of the projects and find out who was owed what to date, to help them square up with the original subcontractors.”
He said a couple of subcontractors have chosen to walk away from the project, but most have stayed on to complete the work. He said completion should take two or three months.
“For the most part, it’s pretty black and white but there are some instances where we’re going to have to take a leap of faith with the subcontractors and their suppliers and vendors,” he said. “I think for the most part we’re doing a good job in making sure people get … what they’re owed.”
The identical buildings have facades on them but still need their interiors completed. The Airline Highway location has the parking lot graded, but the one facing I-12 is a nondescript building surrounded by overgrown grass.
Taylor said Englewood has stepped in at the request of developers, but this is the first time it’s had to come in for a bank that found itself with two half-built properties on its hands.
“We’re starting to see it more and more,” he said of the trend on the national scene. “We’re hearing of a lot of developers where they’re just giving it back to the banks, and banks aren’t builders or developers.”
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