Roedels will be ‘perfect match’

adirondackdailyenterprise.com

By CHRIS KNIGHT , Adirondack Daily Enterprise

SARANAC LAKE - Sewa Arora says many people approached him about buying the Hotel Saranac since his family purchased the iconic Main Street property six-and-a-half years ago.

He said he ultimately decided to sell it to Roedel Companies because the price was right and because he knew the hotel would be in good hands.

"The offer the Roedels made to us was reasonable, it met our goal and we decided to sell it," Arora told the Enterprise during an interview Friday in his office. He did not say what that price is.

"We also saw these people are professional," Arora added. "They know exactly what they do. This place needs a lot of construction work, and they are experts in that field in addition to operating a lot of other hotels.

"They also have the roots in the North Country, so this will be a perfect match."

New Hampshire-based Roedel Companies, which owns and operates a chain of hotels in the eastern U.S., announced plans to buy and renovate the Hotel Saranac on Monday. In a news release announcing the deal, the company said it will "restore the property to its historic grandeur by renovating (the hotel's) ballroom, lobby, 86 guest rooms and first-floor retail space."

"We believe very strongly we've got a plan that will work, and we're looking forward to getting it done," Fred Roedel III, a fourth-generation summer resident of the Saranac Lake area and a principal in Roedel Companies, told the Enterprise Tuesday.

In July of last year, the Enterprise reported that village officials sent three potential buyers to the hotel, including local resident Lee Keet, none of whom were able to come to terms with Arora. The 25,000-square foot hotel was advertised for sale on Craigslist last September, although the ad was removed the day after the Enterprise reported on it; Arora called it "a mistake." Malone developer Chris LaBarge, who recently announced plans to build a 90-room hotel on Lake Flower, said he had approached Arora about buying the Hotel Saranac but wasn't able to reach an agreement with him.

Arora said Friday he has been negotiating with Roedel Companies for roughly the past eight months. The deal is still being finalized but he said he hopes it can close sometime in the next few months, "if all the commitments are met."

The Hotel Saranac had been an economic anchor for the downtown and a social hub for the community for decades until the Aroras bought it from Paul Smith's College in 2007. The hotel's restaurant, bar and pub have been closed for several years; faded "for lease" signs put on the building's front windows two years ago are still there. Its parking lot is empty most days. Groups and organizations that used to meet at the hotel regularly have gone elsewhere. The frequent wedding receptions and other events in the ballroom and meeting rooms have trickled out. Downtown merchants say the business they used to get from the hotel's guests has disappeared.

Arora has said local residents stopped frequenting the hotel and stopped sending their visiting family and friends to stay there because of the unpopular business decisions - like cutting personnel - he had to make when he took over. He's said there's no way he could have run the hotel like the college, which consistently lost money running it as a teaching institution, not a business.

"We didn't come here to please everybody," Arora said Friday. "We are business people, and we had to make business decisions."

Arora acknowledged that a sour and often downright hostile relationship developed between him and the community, although he said that didn't influence his decision to sell the property.

"Our decision to sell the hotel is based on what we were looking for, and we got it," he said, "not because of any bad relations with the community or feeling any pressure to sell it. I've said before that we can survive without the local support, and we have survived.

"I wish things would have been different, but it went beyond anything that we could have corrected. It went from bad to worse. The locals felt so strongly that they just hated us."

Despite what happened with the hotel, Arora said he and his wife, who came to the Adirondacks from downstate, plan to return to the area to spend the summers here in the future. Arora said the mountain air has been good for his health.

"We're going to miss this place," he said. "No question about that."

Contact Chris Knight at 891-2600 ext. 24 or cknight@adirondackdailyenterprise.com.

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