DAYTONA BEACH — The Streamline Hotel, one of the recent success stories in the rebound of the beachside lodging industry, is headed to the auction block.

The historic hotel, at 140 S. Atlantic Ave., will go up for sale April 1-3 in an online auction conducted by Ten-X Commercial, one of the nation’s leading online commercial real estate companies.

The minimum bid is $2.3 million, according to the company’s website, but Streamline owner Eddie Hennessy confirmed this week that he’s expecting to get more than $7 million for the hotel, famous for its connection to the birth of NASCAR.

[READ MORE: Daytona’s Streamline Hotel marks its grand opening]

“The reserve on the auction is $7.5 million,” said Hennessy, who invested $6 million into a renovation that attracted national media attention. Veteran hotel turnaround expert Anthony Melchiorri visited in June 2014 to film an episode on the project for the Travel Channel’s “Hotel Impossible” and then came on board as a business partner.

The hotel opened to grand fanfare in 2017, with a celebration attended by dignitaries including Jim France, chairman of the board of International Speedway Corp. Built in 1941, the hotel became the birthplace of NASCAR in late 1947 when its rooftop bar was the site of meetings that led to the creation of the stock car racing sanctioning organization.

Two years after that grand opening, Hennessy has decided that he isn’t interested in running a hotel.

“Honestly, in a nutshell, I’m a land developer, more of historical clean-up guy,” said Hennessy, who was raised in the Daytona Beach area. “What I am concentrating on now is to move on to other properties and continue on working with other developments.

“I’m not a hotelier, not a restaurateur, not a bar owner,” Hennessy added. “I did this (Streamline) to start a movement in Daytona and clean up the beachside. It’s a passion of mine, being here most of my life.”

'A lot of activity'

The Streamline is already generating a lot of interest among potential bidders on the Ten-X website, said Paul Sexton, an Orlando broker working on the auction for HREC Investment Advisors, a national hotel brokerage based in Denver.

“Typically, with any Ten-X auction, a goal is to get 100 people to sign the confidentiality agreement (to participate),” Sexton said. “We are 50 percent above that level, at 150, and we’re still a month out from the auction. So there has been a lot of activity.

“Eddie did a fantastic job on the renovation of the property, so it shows exceedingly well,” Sexton said. “We’re looking for somebody or a group of people to get excited about it and enter into the auction.”

In a booming Florida real estate market, the Daytona Beach area is among the increasingly rare coastal destinations where beachfront property can be bought for less than $2 million an acre, Sexton said.

“First movers already have taken advantage of that and now you start getting a second wave of developers and investors,” Sexton said. “The first movers have taken significant risk out of the market so people now want to start to capitalize on the more stable conditions there.”

Sexton is optimistic about the area’s long-term future, comparing it to the evolution of a popular South Florida destination.

“I tell people if they are trying to visualize what Daytona Beach will become, all they have to do is look to Fort Lauderdale,” Sexton said. “Fort Lauderdale in the 1980s was a spring break market, a low-rated market. Just because of the changing demographics in Florida, all of a sudden Fort Lauderdale has become a premier luxury beachfront destination. There’s no reason why Daytona Beach cannot accomplish the same thing over time.”

Ideally, a new owner at The Streamline would bring a depth of hospitality experience that would enable “the implementation of experienced management and ownership that can take the property to the level that it has the potential to become,” Sexton said.

'A comforting thought'

The impact of Hennessy’s work on The Streamline was praised by Ed Kelley, Volusia County Council chair, who added that he understood the motivation to step away from the daily hotel operations.

“The contribution he has made by bringing that property back to life is very important,” Kelley said. “I would expect that someone would consider that an attractive investment considering how things are going on the beachside. Running a hotel is such a totally different operation, like being the chef and being the owner of a restaurant. There’s a big difference. The community owes him a pat on the back for undertaking this project.”

Beyond the hotel, Hennessy also owns nearby vacant lots on both sides of Coates Street south from Fifth Avenue to East International Speedway Boulevard, as well as the lot with an abandoned restaurant building one block south on A1A, and an additional vacant lot west of the hotel.

Those properties are not for sale in the auction. They are now Hennessy’s immediate focus, he said.

“I’m working on a big project at ISB (International Speedway Boulevard), working with the city on that, so I’m going to continue to do what I’m doing,” said Hennessy, alluding to a plan by the city to build a roundabout at the heavily traveled intersection of ISB and Atlantic Avenue.

The roundabout would be part of a complete overhaul of the half-mile-long East ISB that would also include new medians, bike lanes, landscaping and widened sidewalks.

"I was definitely surprised because he was doing such a remarkable job," said Daytona Beach Mayor Derrick Henry. "I'm certainly hopeful the next owner will have the same level of commitment he's shown to the area. His resolve and commitment to that property is unmatched really in that area. He turned it into a beautiful property. Hopefully, this won't stall the evolution of the area."

If anything, Hennessy said, the transition will yield more time to work on that project.

“Operating a hotel is a 24-7 thing and it has taken up a lot of my time," Hennessy said. “Now it’s time to move on, time for someone else as a hotelier to take over and run the hotel.”

The Daytona Beach area is fortunate that Hennessy wants to have an ongoing role in beachside development, said Jim Berkley, general manager of the 744-room Hilton Daytona Beach Oceanfront Resort, the area’s largest hotel.

“Knowing that Eddie remains engaged in the transformation efforts of our key visitor arrival ‘port of entry’ at A1A and ISB (International Speedway Boulevard) is a comforting thought,” Berkley said by email. “Eddie's recent demolitions of two old abandoned structures he owned in this same zone instantly changed the arrival/departure perspective at this mission-critical intersection.”