The Crowne Plaza in North Augusta is for sale.
Hospitality Real Estate Counselors (HREC) Investment Advisers listed the 180-room hotel late in March as a core investment – in real estate lingo, a generally safe bet for the future owner.
Current owner Ackerman Greenstone has a 20-year franchise lease agreement with InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), which owns the Crowne Plaza brand, lending some heft to that core investment designation.
But under Ackerman Greenstone’s ownership, the Crowne Plaza property at 1060 Center St. has not once been able to generate the property tax revenues required of it under the 2017 agreement that established the Municipal Improvement District, or "MID," for all properties associated with Project Jackson, now Riverside Village.
The property has routinely been able to meet only 80% to 85% of its obligation to the city of North Augusta since opening in 2019. For the most recent fiscal year, the property met 82% of its $393,600 obligation and was levied a $69,000 MID fee, which tax records show has been paid in full.
It's also the only developed property at Riverside Village that has ever owed that extra fee – excepting the stadium parking deck in 2022, a situation primarily due to that property’s involvement in a legal tussle at the time.
Even during the period when taxes and MID fees on other Riverside Village properties were paid months past due (in November and only in time to avoid their being auctioned), Greenstone has always paid up on the Crowne Plaza by the actual deadline in May.
Greg Greenawalt, general manager at the Crowne Plaza confirmed that the property will continue to be a Crowne Plaza hotel “for many, many years in the future” regardless of who might buy it and counted the hotel’s local success as reason for it being listed.
“It’s a great investment opportunity, and the ownership group wants to see what the market will bear,” he said.
“We’ve been a great asset to the North Augusta community, and I think we’ve contributed to the local economy, tourism, the hospitality business,” Greenawalt said. “And that’s going to go on unchanged in the future ... I don’t see any changes taking place at all.”
