The Clarion Hotel on Williams Boulevard in Kenner, one of Joe Jaeger’s hotels that is up for sale. It will be auctioned in July by Dallas brokers Ten-X.
Joe Jaeger, president and CEO of MCC Real Estate Group, who passed away June 23, 2024.
The Clarion Hotel on Williams Boulevard in Kenner, one of Joe Jaeger’s hotels that is up for sale. It will be auctioned in July by Dallas brokers Ten-X.
The Clarion Hotel on Williams Boulevard in Kenner is set to be auctioned later this month as part of a plan to sell off the empire of Joe Jaeger, a hotelier who died last week after a car accident on the northshore.
Jaeger had already been planning to sell much of his hotel network, which includes 15 properties in the “J Collection,” which are mostly boutique operations located in the French Quarter and other central New Orleans neighborhoods.
Joe Jaeger, president and CEO of MCC Real Estate Group, who passed away June 23, 2024.
Jaeger and his partners bought the 292-room Clarion near the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in 2006 and rebranded it as a Choice Hotels franchise last year. Jaeger had leased the entire hotel to the Shell Oil Company during the COVID pandemic, which kept the operation and its staff going at full tilt.
That lease expired more than a year ago, and the hotel was given a makeover last summer. However, Jaeger had been trying to sell it for months and had decided before his death to auction it off, according to advisors who weren’t authorized to speak on the record.
“This was a kind of ‘stepchild’ among Joe’s other assets,” said one of the advisors, noting that all his other hotels are more upscale, boutique-style operations like Hotel Mazarin and the Chateau Hotel in the French Quarter, the Nottoway Plantation & Resort in White Castle, Mansion Dunleith in Natchez, and The Refuge, a Sheraton-branded resort in Flowood, Mississippi.
“They had been marketing this property for awhile and been taking a loss on it,” the advisor said. “They wanted it off their books.”
When he purchased the Clarion after Hurricane Katrina, “it was a really sleazy place with nefarious things going on, especially in the big central courtyard pool area,” another advisor said.
After Jaeger and his partners bought the hotel, which was originally built in 1974, they completely renovated it and later joined the Crowne Plaza franchise. They marketed it to corporate and other event organizers as an ideal meeting place just two miles from the airport, emphasizing the nearly 7,000-foot ballroom, which they boasted was the biggest in Jefferson Parish.
According to details posted by Ten-X, the auction house based in Irvine, California, the building is 406,000 square feet with just over 11,000 square feet of event and meeting space. It sits on a 5.6-acre site with an outdoor saltwater pool.
Most upscale hotels, like those in downtown New Orleans, are not typically sold at auction. But it is not an unusual way to off load “cookie cutter” hotels like the Clarion, which are typically part of large franchise groups that dictate room size and layout, furnishings, carpeting and so on.
Ten-X said the Clarion is not covered by a deal Jaeger made with Ambridge Hospitality group last year to manage most of his hotels, so a new owner wouldn’t be encumbered by that agreement. Nor would they be required to continue with the Choice Hotels brand.
The auction is set to start July 29 and run for three days, with a starting bid of $4.5 million. These types of hotels usually sell for about three times that amount, or about $50,000 per room, according to industry experts.
“Several months ago, Joe placed the property for sale in the ordinary course of business,” Jaeger’s firm MCC Real Estate said in a statement on Wednesday. “The property has generated meaningful interest and to maximize exposure, we are utilizing the Ten-X real estate platform to competitively solicit offers this month.”
Jaeger’s firm is being run by his long-time financial advisor, Randy Waesche, under his succession plan.
Email Anthony McAuley tmcauley@theadvocate.com.
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