Vista Capital Company recently arranged and closed $17.3 million of financing for the Crowne Plaza Union Station located in downtown Indianapolis within America’s first Union Station.
The hotel is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The property is adjacent to the Indiana Convention Center and is connected via over-air walkway to Lucas Oil Stadium. The full-service, upscale Crowne Plaza features 273 rooms, including 26 original Pullman Traincar sleeping rooms named and decorated after famous personalities from the early 1900s.
The financing was funded by an affiliate of a European-based investment bank. The loan was competitively bid by several lenders, who were drawn to the market, the strong sponsorship and the historic nature of the asset. The 10-year, fixed-rate financing will be used to fund a large renovation project to redesign the hotel interior with a modern, clean and chic aesthetic. The financing will also be used to retire the existing financing, while concurrently reducing debt service payments by about one-third.
Vista Capital was able to negotiate highly favorable, non-recourse, fixed-rate financing with pricing of about 5 percent.
“Ownership was able to accomplish a number of key goals in this transaction,” said Zak Selbert, the founding principal at Vista Capital Company. “Despite frequently-changing underwriting standards,” Selbert added, “the borrower benefited from Vista’s ability to structure long-term, fixed-rate financing that would typically be structured as a floating-rate bridge loan. The financing will save ownership millions of dollars.
