Canadian investor and developer Harry Stinson purchased the Adam’s Mark hotel this morning. Stinson paid $12 million for the property. WNY Lodging LLC was the seller.

Stinson is proposing to convert the 484-room hotel into the “Buffalo Grand Hotel.” The purchase was made via an investment fund, by assembling finances from investors. The deal was made entirely on a loan basis. Stinson controls the operating company 100%. There are no other shareholders in the hotel. Investors are issued promissory notes, but Stinson controls interests the hotel. For the purpose of the acquisition it was restructured as a sole ownership deal, which is a change-up from the way Stinson’s deals are structure in his home country (Canada).

Stinson has called the hotel “well-located” but “tired” and in needing of a make-over. He says it is ‘fundamentally fine” with event space and garage parking.

Though losing his designated-developer status for the Central Terminal, he is still interested in redeveloping the east side landmark. According to Stinson, purchasing the Adam’s Mark gives him the ‘instant hotel infrastructure’ needed to host events at the Central Terminal.

The hotel, which opened in 1980 as a Hilton, has traded hands a number of times in recent years. San Francisco-based Chartres Lodging Group, LLC purchased the hotel for $18.63 million in 2008. It had been owned by HBE Corp. since 1998 when it paid $15 million for the property. The Buffalo location was one of five Adam’s Mark hotels purchased by Chartres Lodging in a package deal.

Chartres sold the property to Corning-based Visions Hotels/WNY Lodging LLC in February 2009 for $7.5 million. A promised $10 million makeover and conversion to a Crowne Plaza in 2011 was never completed.

Get Connected: Stinson Properties, 289.389.1377