The Clermont Motor Hotel, home to the seedy namesake lounge that attracts celebs and locals alike to gawk at its gallery of aging strippers, has been sold.
A team of Nashville and New York developers bought the vacant hotel, which houses the unique strip joint in its basement, “to redevelop as a boutique hotel,” according to a news release issued Wednesday.
Ethan Orley, who along with Philip Welker controls Clermont Hotel Partners LLC, said the partners would further detail their plans in coming weeks. A sale price was not disclosed.
The hotel, built in the 1920s, fell on hard times despite the Clermont Lounge’s singular appeal. The lodger was foreclosed upon and later ordered closed by health inspectors in late 2009, according to reports in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s archives. Fulton County health officials complained of dirty linen, old bedding and stains from bedbugs, as well as mold and unsanitary plumbing issues.
There have been plans over the years to renovate the aging building. A prior owner, Inman Park Properties, tried to sell the Ponce De Leon Avenue hotel a few years ago for $6.5 million but lost control of the property.
The hotel is not far from Jamestown Properties’ Ponce City Market, the $200 million redevelopment of the hulking former City Hall East and Sears warehouse into a massive mix of apartments, retail and offices.
“We are thrilled to have the chance to reimagine the Clermont as a great hotel,” Welker, the principal of real estate firm BNA Associates and Clermont Hotel Partners, said in the release.
The building, he said, “has all the right ingredients to become not only a destination boutique hotel for Atlanta, but for the Southeast.”
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