April 26--The Chicago-based developer putting apartments in the formerly empty Roberts Tower and reviving other downtown St. Louis buildings is now planning to sell one of those pieces -- the Mayfair Hotel.

UrbanStreet Group bought the 25-story tower, the hotel, the Orpheum Theater and other buildings last fall from businessmen brothers Michael and Steven Roberts.

Under way is completion of the Roberts Tower with apartments and work on storefront space in the former Roberts Lofts on the Plaza, the apartment building and one-time St. Louis School Board headquarters UrbanStreet renamed as The Lofts at OPOP (Old Post Office Plaza).

Unlike those buildings and some empty Locust Street structures that it intends to continue to own, UrbanStreet plans to sell the Mayfair to a small chain of boutique hotels.

The Mayfair has struggled for years with low occupancy. Some workers complained in 2011 of late paychecks. Michael Roberts said at the time that the delays resulted from a glitch in transferring data to a payroll contractor.

UrbanStreet is negotiating the Mayfair's sale to Magnolia Hotels of Denver. Magnolia has boutique hotels in Denver, Dallas, Houston and Bryan-College Station, Texas. Its recently opened hotel in Omaha, Neb., commands that city's highest room rate, a hotel industry analyst said.

Under a plan outlined Tuesday to the board of the city's Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority, UrbanStreet hopes to sell the Mayfair by September. After an $11 million renovation, it would reopen next April as a Magnolia.

LCRA board members voted to approve UrbanStreet's request for property tax abatement for the Mayfair and other former Roberts buildings the developer bought last fall for $16.5 million.

In its request, UrbanStreet said the plan is for the Mayfair to become "an improved, upscale boutique hotel."

Bob Burk, UrbanStreet's managing partner, said Thursday that Magnolia officials are doing ther "due diligence" on the pending deal.

Efforts this week to reach Magnolia for comment were unsuccessful. A Magnolia representative said previously that the company was looking to put a hotel in St. Louis.

Bill Kuehling, UrbanStreet's St. Louis lawyer, told the LCRA board that the developer is eager to proceed on the downtown projects.

UrbanStreet hopes to put the Orpheum in the "friendly hands" of an operator that will run the theater for the long term, he said. A sale, lease or partnership with such an operator could be part of the redevelopment of the Mayfair, which is adjacent to the Orpheum, UrbanStreet said in its tax abatement request.

The developer's Lofts at OPOP, in the former St. Louis School Board building at 911 Locust, had occupancy of 31 of its 47 apartments as of April 4, according to the abatement request. The building's residential portion is in good condition but its street-level storefronts need reconstruction, the request added. UrbanStreet also wants new sidewalks, lights and other street improvements in the 900 block of Locust, where the Roberts brothers had proposed renovation of empty buildings as a Hotel Indigo.

"If you go there at night, it's kind of foreboding right now," Kuehling said.

UrbanStreet, which specializes in housing development, is considering 73 one-bedroom apartments in the buildings on Locust the Robertses had eyed as a Hotel Indigo. The company said in its tax request that two of the four structures are in "demolition condition" while the remaining two "are in need of a complete and total renovation to every aspect of the exterior and interior." Kuehling said that, in particular, the small building at 10th and Locust streets "is a pretty hopeless case" and needs to be torn down.

Gary Andreas, a Chesterfield-based hotel consultant, said the Indigo plan on Locust never made sense. But redoing the 170-room Mayfair as a Magnolia would be smart, he said.

"They're very nice hotels," Andreas said. "They're all in old properties, signature older buildings that are renovated for hotel use."

The Mayfair, completed in 1925, is on the National Register of Historic Places.

"Magnolia is a true boutique hotel," Andreas said. "They're going to be pushing the top end of the market, ratewise. And that's probably where they belong."

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