MACON, Ga. — A North Carolina man who wanted to buy and run Macon’s old Ramada Inn says he doesn’t understand why a court-appointed receiver threw out his high bid.
Anil Rathore says the receiver won’t explain why he rejected Rathore’s $4.1 million bid for the downtown hotel and instead cut a deal with Macon-Bibb County.
Turning down a qualified private buyer, he said, “sounds a little silly.”
The 298-room hotel on First Street has been a Ramada, a Radisson, a Hilton, the Crowne Plaza and the Downtown Macon hotel.
But it’s been vacant and decaying for more than a decade.
This summer, a federal judge appointed a receiver – the Great American Hotel Group -- to sell it on behalf of its creditors.
According to court records, Rathore’s company – Indo US Ventures – was the high bidder in a Nov. 15 online auction.
Six days later, the receiver signed a purchase-and-sale agreement with Indo US. That document says the deal was tentative and the seller could still back out.
And three days later, on Nov. 24, they did just that. Dave Akridge of Great American wrote, “Seller is hereby exercising its right to terminate the Agreement… Seller does not approve the sale.”
What happened?
Akridge told 13WMAZ, “The county offered a better deal.”
On Nov. 27, Great American signed a second agreement with Macon-Bibb County for $4.5 million.
That deal still needs approval from a federal judge. Macon-Bibb Mayor Lester Miller says he hopes that will happen in January.
But Rathore says he plans to ask the judge to throw out that latest deal and give him a second chance. He says he’s prepared to offer the owners more than Bibb County.
“If you have a private buyer who’s willing to pay more, why would you not take that?” he says.
Rathore says he and his father have been running hotels in North Carolina for more than 30 years.
He said their company has more than $20 million in backing to pay for repairs and renovations to the crumbling inn.
They planned to run the 16-story hotel as a Kimpton boutique hotel under the Holiday Inn brand.
And he says he planned to move here with his family to run the hotel and make it a downtown centerpiece.
“You need to be part of the community,” he said. “You need to be shaking hands with the movers and the shakers in the downtown. It’s not a highway hotel.”
Rathore says he’s in touch with a Macon lawyer about challenging the county sale. He also says he reached out to Akridge to make a counter offer higher than the county’s, but Akridge didn’t respond.
Akridge says he’s wrong. He says Rathore had five days after Nov. 27 to file a new offer and didn’t.
“Mr. Rathore, he doesn’t understand,” he said.
According to court records, bidders also had until Dec. 19 to file objections to the sale in federal court, but Rathore didn’t.
Akridge says he simply got a better deal for the hotel owners, a company named HDDA. Now it’s up to the federal judge to approve the deal or not, he says.
So far, Miller won’t describe Macon-Bibb’s plans for the hotel. Previously, he said the best use for the old Ramada would be to demolish it for a movie.
He told 13WMAZ this week that the county wasn’t interested when the previous owner wanted $12 million. But they jumped in when the price dropped.
Miller said, “The bottom line is, things change from day-to-day,"