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Padre Hotel one step closer to rebirth
San Diego-area owner in escrow with potential buyer
| Friday, Jan 18 2008 10:05 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Jan 18 2008 11:20 PM
Downtown's Padre Hotel may gain new life as a designer hotel, reborn with a modern interior inside its historic facade.
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The historic Padre Hotel in downtown Bakersfield on H Street.
The local landmark's owner, San Diego-area property management company Pacifica Enterprises LLC, is in escrow with an unidentified potential buyer, a city official and a sales agent working on the deal said Friday.
The potential buyer is a developer looking to revive the circa-1928 building and bring hotel guests through its doors once again, according to Donna Kunz, the city's economic and community development director. And that could spark additional growth downtown.
"You know, the Padre, in my opinion, is the anchor property for all that area west of Chester Avenue," Kunz said. "It's the cornerstone of the arts district."
The sale is far from final and could fall through, she said.
If negotiations continue, the sale will likely close between April and June, said Paul Runkle, a Temecula-based sales agent working on the deal with Hendricks & Partners, a Phoenix-based real estate company.
The escrow period for deals of this size -- the Padre is listed for sale at $5.6 million -- varies, he said.
"It all depends how heated the market is," Runkle said. "A lot of times, that's driven by financing in the market."
The colorful Milton "Spartacus" Miller bought the Padre in 1954. Miller died in 1999. His wife, Lora Gordon Miller, sold the Padre to Pacifica in 2002.
The company spent five years trying to turn the hotel into condos, but delays and a botched asbestos removal effort that exposed workers to the carcinogen plagued the renovations.
Pacifica put the building up for sale in June. In October, Kunz said the hotel might have a new owner buy the end of 2007.