Downtown Hotel Faces Sheriff’s Sale
132-room Cambria Hotel on Plankinton Ave. opened just months before pandemic.
Cambria Hotel in 2020. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.
The Cambria Hotel in Westown will likely soon have a new owner.
The four-story, 132-room hotel opened in August 2019, just months before the COVID-19 pandemic decimated the travel sector.
Project lender Access Point Financial filed a $17.5 million foreclosure suit in July against an affiliate of the Chicago-based hotel developer Murphy Development Group. A receiver was appointed to oversee the property.
In November, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Thomas J. McAdams granted the foreclosure.
A sheriff’s sale is now scheduled for December. The proceeds from the sale will pay off creditors, including Atlanta-based Access Point.
A representative of Murphy Development Group did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication. The company, according to its website, remains active in several other states.
The hotel, 503 N. Plankinton Ave., is located just west of the Milwaukee River and between Interstate 794 and The Avenue. Since its opening, a number of new developments have taken place nearby, including Milwaukee Tool‘s new office, the corporate relocation of Regal Rexnord and a number of new office leases.
Two blocks to the north, an older hotel recently went through a foreclosure process. In July, the 138-room Hampton Inn & Suites, 176 W. Wisconsin Ave., was transferred to its lender, Evergreen Bank Group, in lieu of foreclosure. The hotel had closed in April. A similar situation played out in 2019 for the property.
A block to the west of the Hampton Inn, a Fairfield Inn & Suites was sold in a 2022 sheriff’s sale.
To the south, The Iron Horse Hotel is undergoing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in response to a foreclosure filing.
The pandemic-induced downturn and rising interest rates have challenged many hotel operators, creating a situation where owners must invest more equity into their projects as part of refinancing debt or face possible foreclosure. The debt squeeze, driven primarily by macroeconomic trends, might not reflect the day-to-day operation of the hotels.
The Cambria Hotel suffered a fire in May. Sid Grinker Restoration filed a repair permit in August, estimating the cost of its work at $15,000. However, an earlier Department of Neighborhood Services record estimated the building damage at $74,184.
A 2018 building permit indicates the hotel’s construction was estimated to cost $15.4 million. The site was acquired for $3 million in 2016.
The architect of record on the project was Stan Ramaker of the Fond du Lac-based M+A Design. Consolidated Construction Company was the project’s general contractor. Concord Hospitality served as the hotel manager when it opened.
The hotel includes a bar and restaurant on the first floor, which Michael Horne profiled in 2019.
The “Cambria Hotel Milwaukee Downtown” is the only Cambria-branded hotel operating in the Milwaukee market. It is part of the Choice Hotels group, which includes more than 7,000 franchisee-owned hotels carrying a long list of brands, including Cambria, Raddison, Ascent, Comfort, Country Inn & Suites, Sleep Inn, Quality Inn, Clarion, Everhome Suites, WoodSpring Suites, MainStay Suites, Suburban Studios, EconoLodge and Rodeway Inn.
News of the foreclosure was first reported by Tom Daykin.
2019 Photos
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