December 10, 2012 | Richard Piersol for Lincoln Journal Star
The Cornhusker hotel has regained the Marriott brand and will relight its sign at a ceremony Wednesday. The Cornhusker is back on Marriott’s website, too.
Marcus Hotels & Resorts, the new majority owner of the 297-room downtown hotel, said the relighting would signal the kickoff to extensive renovations.
Marcus, which owns or manages 20 hotels, mostly in the Midwest, acquired majority control of the hotel in October and said then it planned to spend several million dollars on renovations and bring back the Marriott brand.
The hotel lost its Marriott affiliation, one of the most prestigious in lodging, early this year because of the financial problems of its former owner, Atul Bisaria.
Marcus had been managing the hotel since September under an agreement with LEM Capital, which repossessed the hotel early this year to settle a debt owed by Bisaria. Marcus owns 75 percent of the property, LEM the rest.
A Marriott affiliation takes advantage of the lodging giant’s vast loyalty programs and marketing capacity.
“We’ve had Marriott people in for the last two weeks, getting everybody trained and up to speed,” General Manager Chuck Harper said.
“The good news is 90 percent of our employees were here when it was a Marriott,” Harper said. “We want the best brand out there for our investment. Fifty percent of our occupancy will be people loyal to Marriott.”
To get and keep a Marriott affiliation is to meet Marriott standards customers appreciate in service and products, Harper said. “Marriott spends a lot of money getting to know their customers,” he said.
The hotel has hired about 25 new employees in the past two weeks and will continue to expand hiring — but only as business dictates, Harper said. “We don’t over hire,” Harper said. “We want to make sure they’re great employees and get all the hours we can give them.”
The company already is working on the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system and elevators, he said, and will start on the associates’ cafeteria in January, then guest rooms and the rest of the projects. Construction will be in various stages through next year.
Harper wouldn’t say how much money The Cornhusker is spending, but it’s in the millions.
“You know what’s great?” Harper said. “This hotel’s been through a lot. To give it some stability, every one of our associates, they’re just excited. We just bought all new china, glass and silverware. We’re buying linens. It’s just the beginning of a great relationship.”
In addition to updating guest rooms and meeting spaces, and a reconfiguration of the lobby, the renovation will include a new restaurant for the hotel, the Miller Time Pub & Grill.
Ownership by Marcus, whose theater division has owned all of Lincoln’s first-run movie theaters since 2008, was expected to put The Cornhusker on more solid footing after several years of instability caused by Bisaria’s shaky financial circumstances.
He acquired The Cornhusker in 2004 from Castle & Cooke, financier David Murdock’s company, which built the hotel in 1983 on the site of the original Cornhusker, which was built in 1926.
Bisaria was indicted in October by a federal grand jury in Illinois on 10 counts of fraud and making false statements to lenders.
Bisaria, 53, of Boca Raton, Fla., and Steve Lewis, 60, of Highland Beach, Fla., were accused of using about $9 million in bank loans to refinance and remodel hotels that Bisaria’s Shubh Hotels owned in Cincinnati and Boca Raton for purposes other than those the bank intended: to prop up Bisaria’s failing lodging properties elsewhere. Lewis owns Contract Purchasing and Design, an interior design and remodeling company in Boca Raton.
Bisaria also owned hotels in Detroit and Pittsburgh, both of which he lost during the financial crisis after 2008. He was overdue with plans for renovations at The Cornhusker when Marriott International withdrew the brand’s “flag” early this year.