The former Embassy Suites Inner Harbor Hotel at 222 St. Paul Place is the latest downtown high rise to go on the auction block.
Alex Cooper Auctioneers is advertising a foreclosure sale of the property on Sept. 20 at 11 a.m. on the steps of the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse at 100 N. Calvert St.
The Embassy Suites property first opened in 1967 as an apartment building and was converted to the Tremont Plaza Hotel in the 1980s by developer Christopher Smith, with a young Adam Gross of Ayers Saint Gross as the architect. One of the tallest buildings in Baltimore, it was rebranded as an Embassy Suites property in 2013. It is one of numerous downtown hotels that closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Saint Paul Place property was acquired in 2021 by Urban Investment Partners Cos. (UIP) of Washington, D. C., which disclosed plans to convert the 37-story tower to apartments. UIP acquired the hotel along with The Grand events venue at 225 N. Charles St. for a total price of $18 million, but The Grand is not part of the Sept. 20 sale, according to auctioneer Paul Cooper.
A $300,000 deposit is required to bid on Sept. 20. The auction can be called off if UIP can satisfy the lender before the auction date. A principal for UIP told the Baltimore Business Journal that UIP is working to retain the property by obtaining new financing that will take out the existing lender.
Alex Cooper was also the auctioneer this week for a foreclosure sale involving the Centerpoint Apartments, a mixed-use development that occupies nearly a full city block bounded by Howard, Fayette, Eutaw and Baltimore Streets on the west side of downtown.
The property consists of several parcels collectively containing 392 apartments; 33,835 square feet of retail space at street level and a parking garage. The former owner is a Pennsylvania-based group that paid more than $75 million in 2013. Cooper initially offered three properties separately — 20 N. Howard St., 8 N. Howard St., and 11 N. Eutaw St. – and then offered them as one package, which is the way it sold.
The property was bought back by its lender, Fannie Mae, for $48.425 million. Bidding on the courthouse steps started with an opening bid of $46 million and rose in increments to the final offer. The sole competing bidder was a syndicated investment group from northern Virginia, whose representative stopped bidding at $48.325 million.
