Conversion of Hotel to Apartments - who did it?

[Ben Leybovich]

I took a week off to satisfy Patrisha's desire to remodel our house (see the pictures here). But, a deal came across my desk. This is a 50+ room hospitality asset. It can be bought at rather low per door basis, even after immediate CapEx. The idea would be to re-zone and convert it to apartments.

The numbers can work on this. However, this needs to be a cash purchase (which we can do0, but it needs to be quick, and there's no way to make this this contingent on a feasibility study. The dynamics of re-zoning and re-purposing scare the crap out of me...

Has anyone done this? How do municipalities view this? Do the make it difficult...?

Thanks for your input!