From the Business Journal:

Hotel Monroe sold in downtown Phoenix for nearly $8 million

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The Hotel Monroe building in downtown Phoenix has been empty for years, but now it has been sold for nearly $8 million.

                                     

Kristena Hansen and Mike Sunnucks

Phoenix Business Journal

A Minneapolis-based hotel and real estate development company has bought the long-vacant Hotel Monroe building in downtown Phoenix.
CSM Corp. acquired the 13-story building at Central Avenue and Monroe Street for nearly $8 million. It has been slated to be redeveloped into a 150-room hotel, but has sat vacant for several years after a foreclosure and a handful of unsuccessful sales attempts.
“The buyer is CSM, a hotel company based in Minnesota. The sales price was $7,850,000,” said Mark Winkleman, the COO of ML Manager, a receivership company selling the building.
CSM owns 37 hotels in 11 states including two in the Phoenix area. The company owns the Hilton Garden Inn Scottsdale and Residence Inn Mesa. CSM also owns hotels in Milwaukee, Denver and Detroit.
A San Diego group called Grasshopper One LLC had been trying to buy the 82-year old historic building but did not meet two closing dates.
ML Manager, the current owner of the building, is a receivership company that has been selling off assets held by Mortgages Ltd. The Phoenix-based commercial lender filed for bankruptcy protection after its CEO Scott Coles committed suicide in 2008.
Winkleman has been trying to sell Hotel Monroe since foreclosing on Grace Communities in 2010.
Grace Communities bought the downtown building in 2007 via a $27 million loan from Mortgages Ltd. with plans to develop a hotel. The Monroe building was long named the Professional Building and was home to Valley Bank & Trust.
“This has been an extremely long road to get this asset sold and I am pleased that this historic building can finally be restored and put back into use,” Winkleman said of today’s sale.