Financial woes stall Cosmo revamp
Posted on Thursday, July 24, 2008
A Fayetteville-based engineering company recently filed a lawsuit against Nock Investments seeking unpaid engineering fees for the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Fayetteville.
Spectrum Engineering, Inc. claims in the suit filed July 2 on that Nock Investments failed to pay $ 8, 133. 72 in engineering fees to design the Cosmopolitan "Cube "Addition. An invoice dated March 5 shows the firm completed more than 88 hours of design work on the hotel.
John Nock, owner of Nock Investments, said the engineering bill has been paid in full and the lawsuit will be dismissed. William Green of Spectrum Engineering would not comment on the pending litigation.
Nock said the invoice should have been sent to Cosmopolitan Ventures, not his investment company. The building was purchased in October 2006 for $ 9. 9 million by Cosmopolitan Ventures LLC, a partnership formed between Richard Alexander and John Nock.
Nock said the design work was for a canopy planned to cover the hotel's swimming pool.
Nock confirmed that the hotel remodeling project scheduled for completion this summer has suffered delays because of financing woes that resulted from a bank closure.
He said the remodeling project was financed by ANB Financial, which was closed on May 9 by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
Nock said that whenever a bank gets taken over, regulators have to review all of the development loans and decide what to do with them.
Nock said he and his partner are in the process of refinancing the debt on the hotel and expect to get that done in the near future.
"We hope to be back up and running soon," said Nock.
He said remodeling continued through May and will resume once funding is restored. He said he and his partner have funded some of the construction costs "out of pocket"since the bank closed.
A dr ywall worker was working on a small area on the first floor of the hotel Wednesday.
The city's building permit records show that the last inspection of the hotel's remodeling project was in January. Nock said he's not sure about the need for inspections because most of the revamp involves work like painting and installing new carpet.
"It's a face lift, not a major construction project," he said.
The original project was expected to take about 9 or 10 months, he said. He expects the funding setback to delay the project by no more than three or four months.
In January, Nock said the painting of the building's exterior in a bright white was almost complete. He said Wednesday that the painting was under contract to be completed by Aug. 15.
The rooms on floors nine through 14 are involved in the remodeling project, but rooms for the other floors are available for guests, he said.
Nock said the hotel remains open for business and continues hosting banquets and special events.
The Cosmopolitan is planned as a sister hotel to the 18-story Renaissance Tower planned for the old Mountain Inn site, Nock said in an earlier interview.
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