Visions Hotels of Corning completed its post-foreclosure auction purchase of the struggling Buffalo Niagara Marriott hotel late last week, giving one of the region’s biggest hotels a new owner but yielding a nearly $10 million loss on the former loan.
Buffalo News file photo
Amherst Lodging Partners, a Visions affiliate, paid $14.43 million for the 356-room, 10-story hotel at 1340 Millersport Highway in Amherst, buying it from a limited-liability company controlled by Rialto Capital Advisors. That’s the Miami-based special loan servicer that had foreclosed on the hotel, after prior owner Procaccianti Cos. of Cranston, R.I., defaulted on its $21.3 million mortgage loan.
The Visions price is much higher than a $10.5 million online auction bid that Procaccianti had rejected in 2020, when it tried to sell the hotel on its own to avoid a foreclosure. But it was $1 million less than what Douglas Jemal had offered to pay in the live foreclosure auction a year ago, when Rialto took control of the property with a $16 million “paper” bid since it held the debt.
And while commercial real estate research firm Trepp reported total liquidation proceeds of $16.25 million for the bondholders that owned the prior mortgage debt, those investors will still share a final loss of $9.7 million.
Built in 1981 and renovated in 2008, the Marriott sits on 11 acres at the intersection of Millersport and Flint Road, near University at Buffalo’s North Campus. According to Trepp, it was valued at $57.2 million in 2011, but the appraisal had fallen to just $18.2 million more recently.
Source: The Buffalo News
