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Algonquin Go-Round
What fresh hotel operator is this? The Denver, Colo.--based real- estate development company Miller Global Properties has signed a conditional contract to buy the onetime haunt of writer Dorothy Parker and her vicious circle, the Algonquin Hotel, for between $41 million and $42 million, according to sources close to the situation. If the deal goes through, Miller Global will become the Algonquin's sixth owner, and its second in six years.
The hotel, which is located on 44th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues, has been on the market since January 2001. The sources said its current principal owner, the Dallas-based Olympus Real Estate Partners, showed the property through Eastdil Realty, the exclusive adviser to Olympus, to almost 20 interested parties. The asking price, according to one source: $50 million.
That same source said that Bernard Goldberg, who owns the Mansfield, Wales, Shoreham, and Roger Williams hotels in Manhattan, had signed a letter of intent to buy the Algonquin, for a price "in the mid-40's," just before Sept. 11. But after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the bad hotel business that followed, that deal fell through.
Olympus, the real-estate arm of the leveraged-buyout firm Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, purchased the Algonquin in 1997 for $32.6 million. Real-estate sources told The Transom that the company has put approximately $7 million into renovations, including the addition of eight rooms and one suite.
Olympus also made an effort to capitalize on the hotel's considerable literary history. In the late 20's and early 30's, the hotel became a daily hangout for Mrs. Parker, Alexander Woollcott, Edna Ferber, George S. Kaufman and other writers and wits who became known as the Algonquin Roundtable. The 1998 renovation included the refurbishment of the oak walls in the Rose Room, where the group used to meet and "The Spoken Word," a series of readings, continues to meet on Monday nights. In October, the hotel and The Times Literary Supplement will jointly celebrate their 100th birthdays.
Despite these efforts, however, the hotel never managed to recapture the fizz that Mrs. Parker and her cohorts brought to the place. While a drink at the Algonquin continues to be on the to-do list of any Bennington graduate with literary...