Joe Jaeger’s Clarion hotel on Williams Boulevard, near the Louis Armstrong International Airport in Kenner, is set to be auctioned later this month as part of a plan to sell off the bulk of the late hotelier’s hospitality empire.
Jaeger, who died last week after a car accident on the northshore, had already been planning to sell much of his hotel network, which includes 15 properties in the “J Collection,” mostly boutique operations located in the French Quarter and other central New Orleans neighborhoods.
Joe Jaeger, president and CEO of MCC Real Estate Group, who passed away June 23, 2024.
The 292-room Clarion, which Jaeger and his partners bought in 2006, was rebranded as a Choice Hotels franchise last year. Jaeger had leased the entire hotel to the Shell Oil Company during the COVID pandemic, which kept the operation and its staff going at full tilt.
That lease expired more than a year ago, and the hotel was given a makeover last summer. However, Jaeger had been trying to sell it for months and decided before his untimely death to auction it off, according to advisors who weren’t authorized to speak on the record.
“This was a kind of ‘stepchild’ among Joe’s other assets,” said one of the advisors, noting that all the other hotels are more upscale, boutique-style operations like the 10 in the French Quarter, including Hotel Mazarin and the Chateau Hotel. Also, the Nottoway Plantation & Resort in White Castle, Mansion Dunleith in Natchez and The Refuge, a Sheraton-branded resort in Flowood, Mississippi.
“They had been marketing this property for awhile and been taking a loss on it,” the advisor said. “They wanted it off their books.”
Post-Katrina upgrade
When he bought the Clarion after Hurricane Katrina, “it was a really sleazy place with nefarious things going on, especially in the big central courtyard pool area,” another advisor said.
After Jaeger and partners bought the hotel, which was originally built in 1974, they completely renovated it and later joined the Crowne Plaza franchise. They marketed it to corporate and other event organizers as an ideal meeting place just two miles from the airport, emphasizing the nearly 7,000-foot ballroom, which they boasted was the biggest in Jefferson Parish.
The auction option
According to details posted by the auction house, Irvine, California-based Ten-X, the building covers 406,000 square feet with just over 11,000 square feet of event and meeting space. It sits within a 5.6-acre site with an outdoor saltwater pool.
Auctioning is not a typical way to sell upscale or unique hotels such as those that make up most of the downtown New Orleans hospitality landscape. But it is not unusual for “cookie cutter” hotels like the Clarion, which are edge-of-town and usually part of large franchise groups that dictate room size and layout, furnishings, carpeting and so on.
Tex-X said the Clarion is not covered by the deal Jaeger set up last year, whereby Ambridge Hospitality group will manage most of his hotels, so a new owner wouldn’t be encumbered by that agreement. Nor would they have to continue with the Choice Hotel brand.
The auction is set to start July 29 and run for three days, with a pre-determined starting bid of $4.5 million. These types of hotels usually sell for about three times that amount, or about $50,000 per room, according to industry experts.
“The Kenner Clarion has been part of the Jaeger portfolio for nearly 20 years since Joe completed a restoration of the hotel post-Katrina,” Jaeger’s firm MCC Real Estate said in a statement on Wednesday.
“Several months ago, Joe placed the property for sale in the ordinary course of business,” it said. “The property has generated meaningful interest and to maximize exposure, we are utilizing the Ten-X real estate platform to competitively solicit offers this month.”
Jaeger’s firm is being run by his long-time financial advisor, Randy Waesche, under his succession plan.