The Trenton Times published the following article on October 21, 2013. To read the full article, click here.
Auction of Trenton’s Lafayette Yard hotel to start at $5.5M
By Jenna Pizzi/The Times of Trenton
on October 21, 2013 at 6:41 PMTRENTON — The former Trenton Marriott will be put on the auction block next month with bids starting at $5.5 million — a huge discount from the millions of dollars it cost to build and the $30 million in outstanding debt remaining from construction and financing.
The Lafayette Yard Community Development Corp., the public non-profit formed by the city to oversee the hotel, today approved the “stalking horse bid” placed by Edison Broadcasting as the starting price. The auction is scheduled for Nov. 25.
City officials hope to recover as much as possible from the sale of the struggling hotel in order to pay off debt on the structure. Originally conceived as a cornerstone economic development project to shore up the city’s business community, the hotel, which opened in 2002, has never been consistently profitable and has required infusions of city cash to keep it going. The decision to sell the 197-room structure is seen as a way to cut the losses by putting the hotel in the hands of a private operator.