Plaza Hotel Auction Falls Through
A planned auction for the famous Plaza Hotel has been canceled.
The auction had been scheduled for April 26, Crain’s reports. Its cancellation gives the property’s current owners, David and Simon Reuben, more time to sell the property and pay back their creditors.
The brothers bought the mortgage from Bank of China when the hotel’s previous owner, Sahara India Pariwar, when into default last year. That firm is headed by Indian investor Subrata Roy, who was sent to prison in 2014 for defrauding investors.
Perhaps its most famous owner was Donald Trump, who picked it up in 1988, declaring in a full-page, open letter in the New York Times that it was his “masterpiece.” He lost it to bankruptcy several years later.
On offer at the canceled auction were the hotel’s rooms, its restaurants and retail space. Crain’s reports that it was intended to be sold in a package, along with the Dream Downtown hotel, which is owned in part by Sahara Roy. The two properties together are backed by about $500M in mortgages. [Crain’s]
