By Bruce Edwards
STAFF WRITER

The 151-room Holiday Inn on Route 7 South is being put up for auction by its owner, C-III Capital Partners of Irving, Texas.

The property is being sold at auction this month, 18 months after the Wolfe and McLaughlin families turned the keys over to their major creditor.

According to the listing on Auction.com, online bidding for the property begins May 15 and ends May 17. Bidding starts at $900,000 with a bid deposit of $10,000.

Opened as a Holiday Inn franchise in 1972, the 95,000-square-foot hotel includes an indoor pool and fitness center, restaurant/lounge and 6,000-square-feet of meeting space. It underwent a major expansion in 1985.

“Strong upside potential exists for a new owner to implement hands-on management and cost containment techniques, drive occupancy and improve the hotel’s operating margins,” Auction.com said in its offering.

It lists an occupancy rate for the Rutland Town hotel of 59 percent.

In a November 2010 interview, Bud McLaughlin said the recession along with mandatory upgrades to the hotel mandated by Holiday Inn’s parent company put the families in an untenable financial position.

“What really pushed us over the edge, to have to go ahead and do this,”

McLaughlin said, “is that Holiday Inn’s parent company, Intercontinental Hotels Group, has a number of requirements that we have to do and we just can’t come up with the funds to do it.”

Before reaching their financial limit, McLaughlin said they had already invested $1.2 million to upgrade the property to meet Holiday Inn standards.

To read the complete story, see Wednesday's Rutland Herald.