Casper's Parkway Plaza hotel has a new owner as GreenLake Real Estate Fund bid $15.5 million at a foreclosure sale to purchase the property.
There were no other bidders for the hotel during the public auction, which was held in the entryway of the Natrona County Courthouse. About 20 people attended and Natrona County Sheriff's Deputy Jay Snider served as the auctioneer.
The hotel and conference center's previous owner, CRU Casper, had defaulted on the terms of its mortgage, according to a foreclosure notice published in the Star-Tribune. It states that GreenLake Real Estate Fund was the lender.
The amount due on the mortgage as of the date of sale was $21,491,957, according to a copy of the certificate of sale.
GreenLake is a Pasadena, California-based lender. According to its website, it is a direct lender and an "alternative investment manager founded in 2008, dedicated to superior fixed income products in commercial real estate."
A $7.5 million acquisition of a Casper hotel and conference center is listed as a transaction on the company's website, but no name or date is included. Property records on the Natrona County website list Parkway Plaza's total market value as just over $7.6 million.
GreenLake did not return a request for comment.
Casper's Community Development Director Liz Becher, who attended the auction, said city officials are "very interested" to see what GreenLake does with the property.
"That area is a primary gateway into downtown Casper," she said. "It's got to be attractive for people to want to get off the interstate (and visit the city)."
Tabitha Overgard, the hotel's general manager, said on Dec. 4 that she just learned the property was being auctioned off.
"I don't know any details about any of that," she said.
The hotel laid off 50 employees when it closed for renovations Oct. 31. At the time, Overgard said a national corporation was planning to buy the hotel.
CRU Casper, which is owned by CRU Real Estate Group, of Costa Mesa, California, had owned Parkway Plaza since 2015.
The hotel's ownership has switched hands several times in the past decade. Casper businessman Pat Sweeney sold the Parkway to a Texas-based company in 2008, but after that firm failed to meet certain conditions, Sweeney took control of the property again. He later sold the hotel to CRU.
The facility was built in 1966, according to its website, and offers 301 guest rooms and more than 45,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor meeting space.
