Riverwalk hotel heads to foreclosure

Alamo Equity failed to make payment on $6M mezzanine loan

Alamo Equity founder Logan Anjaneyulu and El Tropicano hotel
Alamo Equity founder Logan Anjaneyulu and El Tropicano hotel (Loopnet, Alamo Equity)

El Tropicano Riverwalk Hotel has gone into foreclosure and is headed for the auction block.

Alamo Equity, the owner of the 324-room hotel at 110 Lexington Avenue, extended the maturity date on a $6.34 million mezzanine loan from Weston Urban nine times. The owner failed to make a payment by the most recent maturity date, June 30, 2022, and a foreclosure notice was filed earlier this week, the San Antonio Business Journal reported

A private equity fund that was planning to renovate the hotel has been in a legal battle with one of the fund’s investors. 

The investor, former San Antonio broadcasting executive Emilio Nicolas Jr., alleged that the fund’s manager, Alamo Equity founder and managing partner Logan Anjaneyulu, had been mismanaging the fund to limit his personal financial exposure. Nicolas also claimed that Anjaneyulu had given personal guarantees to lenders to stave off foreclosure on the site. District Court Judge Christine Hortick recently ordered the two sides to settle the dispute through arbitration, the outlet said. 

The auction will take place on July 5 at the Bexar County Courthouse. Katherine Tapley, Valerie Medina, Eleanor Burg and Amanda Guillen, of Norton Rose Fulbright law firm, have been appointed as trustees for the sale. 

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El Tropicano is the second San Antonio hotel to foreclose and go to auction recently. The Embassy Suites on the city’s Northwest Side was scheduled for a foreclosure auction June 6 after Hotel Capital defaulted on its $43.5 million loan.

While distress has rippled through some of the city’s hospitality sector, San Antonio’s lodging industry is the most steady among Texas’ major cities, and plenty of investors are making hefty investments as tourism reemerges following a pandemic-fueled slump. 

Ryman Hospitality just paid $800 million for the JW Marriott Hill Country Resort and Spa in San Antonio. And Blueprint Hospitality plans to spend $55 million to convert the old CPS Energy headquarters into a new Riverwalk hotel. 

—Quinn Donoghue 

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(Photo Illustration by The Real Deal with Getty)
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