An unfinished Homewood Suites by Hilton hotel at 12150 Grant Circle in Thornton is seen on Thursday, March 28, 2024. (Justin Wingerter/BusinessDen)
A Hilton hotel in Thornton that was scheduled to open this month “is essentially a stalled construction project” and $23 million in debt, according to its financier.
The Homewood Suites by Hilton at 12150 Grant Circle could soon “end up rotting and becoming irredeemably unusable and unfinishable,” said the State Bank of Texas.
So, on March 21, it sued developer ThornCo Hospitality in Adams County District Court.
The State Bank of Texas calls itself “America’s leading hospitality lender.” It was founded in 1987 by a hotelier in Texas who wanted to fund other hotel projects. It recently loaned $12.5 million to a Homewood Suites in the Denver Tech Center, according to its website.
The bank is asking Adams County Judge Arturo Hernandez to appoint a receiver for the Thornton hotel because ThornCo has proven itself unable to run the project well. Liens have piled up over the years and contractors have sued for payment, the bank notes.
“The project is stalled…due to having run over-budget and over-schedule,” it alleged.
Real estate receiverships are common in cases where developers owe large sums to a lender, but the State Bank of Texas is asking for more. It wants Orchid Global Hospitality in Dallas to take over 12150 Grant Circle entirely, finish constructing the hotel, open and operate the hotel, change the locks, pay itself from hotel revenue and possibly even sell the place.
Hernandez said he has mixed feelings on the matter. He “agrees that an appointment of receiver for the property is appropriate” but has concerns about letting a receiver run the hotel, calling that request “very broad.” He has not yet made a decision on the request.
BusinessDen’s attempts to talk with someone from ThornCo were not successful. The LLC lists its address as a home in Modesto, Calif., and its registered agent as Vijaypal Dhillon. He and others from Dhillon Hotels, a California company, didn’t return calls and emails.
But the State Bank of Texas claims that ThornCo’s owners are not opposed to a receiver because they know that “a receiver is needed to facilitate completion of the hotel.”
County records and court filings paint the picture of a project that struggled for years.
Thirty-three liens were filed against the Homewood Suites project between 2019 and 2022. Most but not all of those have been discharged. Three of those lienholders, who were allegedly owed a total of $428,000, also sued ThornCo but later dropped their cases.
Court filings in those cases suggest the hotel project was initially funded by a lender other than the State Bank of Texas but that loan “was insufficient to ensure the various contractors and subcontractors on the project could be timely paid,” according to a 2020 lawsuit from RCD Construction near Steamboat Springs, which was owed $75,000 for unpaid work.
In its lawsuit, the State Bank of Texas is represented by attorneys Robert Hatch II, Brian Ray and Christopher Conant with the firm Hatch Ray Olsen Conant in Denver.
An unfinished Homewood Suites by Hilton hotel at 12150 Grant Circle in Thornton is seen on Thursday, March 28, 2024. (Justin Wingerter/BusinessDen)
A Hilton hotel in Thornton that was scheduled to open this month “is essentially a stalled construction project” and $23 million in debt, according to its financier.
The Homewood Suites by Hilton at 12150 Grant Circle could soon “end up rotting and becoming irredeemably unusable and unfinishable,” said the State Bank of Texas.
So, on March 21, it sued developer ThornCo Hospitality in Adams County District Court.
The State Bank of Texas calls itself “America’s leading hospitality lender.” It was founded in 1987 by a hotelier in Texas who wanted to fund other hotel projects. It recently loaned $12.5 million to a Homewood Suites in the Denver Tech Center, according to its website.
The bank is asking Adams County Judge Arturo Hernandez to appoint a receiver for the Thornton hotel because ThornCo has proven itself unable to run the project well. Liens have piled up over the years and contractors have sued for payment, the bank notes.
“The project is stalled…due to having run over-budget and over-schedule,” it alleged.
Real estate receiverships are common in cases where developers owe large sums to a lender, but the State Bank of Texas is asking for more. It wants Orchid Global Hospitality in Dallas to take over 12150 Grant Circle entirely, finish constructing the hotel, open and operate the hotel, change the locks, pay itself from hotel revenue and possibly even sell the place.
Hernandez said he has mixed feelings on the matter. He “agrees that an appointment of receiver for the property is appropriate” but has concerns about letting a receiver run the hotel, calling that request “very broad.” He has not yet made a decision on the request.
BusinessDen’s attempts to talk with someone from ThornCo were not successful. The LLC lists its address as a home in Modesto, Calif., and its registered agent as Vijaypal Dhillon. He and others from Dhillon Hotels, a California company, didn’t return calls and emails.
But the State Bank of Texas claims that ThornCo’s owners are not opposed to a receiver because they know that “a receiver is needed to facilitate completion of the hotel.”
County records and court filings paint the picture of a project that struggled for years.
Thirty-three liens were filed against the Homewood Suites project between 2019 and 2022. Most but not all of those have been discharged. Three of those lienholders, who were allegedly owed a total of $428,000, also sued ThornCo but later dropped their cases.
Court filings in those cases suggest the hotel project was initially funded by a lender other than the State Bank of Texas but that loan “was insufficient to ensure the various contractors and subcontractors on the project could be timely paid,” according to a 2020 lawsuit from RCD Construction near Steamboat Springs, which was owed $75,000 for unpaid work.
In its lawsuit, the State Bank of Texas is represented by attorneys Robert Hatch II, Brian Ray and Christopher Conant with the firm Hatch Ray Olsen Conant in Denver.
