Landmark Hotel Sale

The long unused Landmark Hotel has been an ongoing concern for Urbana and often viewed as a negative symbol for the local economy and City. This week brought some hopeful changes after previous failed sale attempts. WAND had a brief overview:

The Urbana Landmark Hotel was purchased by Icon Hospitality and will be undergoing major changes.

A redevelopment agreement between the City of Urbana and developer Sam Spiritos and associates calls for a $15 million historic renovation of the Urbana Landmark Hotel in the next two years...

Mayor Diane Wolfe Marlin said this will be the biggest reinvestment in the property in over 35 years.

Full article with video segment here. WCCU also had an overview here. The News-Gazette had a lot of additional details on the deals behind the scenes to get here:

The hotel has been closed since April 2016 and for sale since 2015, when Yuan had an asking price of $5.4 million.
The sale price wasn’t released Tuesday, but the developer had said it wouldn’t buy the hotel for more than $1 million.
Last summer, the city signed a redevelopment agreement with the developer to renovate and re-open the hotel...

With interest on the expected 10-year bond, Marlin said the total cost to the city could be about $6.5 million.

More at that article, including previous deals here. Previous Cheat Sheet update from last May with the initial letter of intent here. More on a previous deal that fell through before that here.