Hotel behind on ad taxes
The Hot Springs Advertising and Promotion Commission said Thursday The Hotel Hot Springs & Spa, 305 Malvern Ave., has fallen behind on remittances of the 3-percent sales tax the commission levies on prepared food and lodging inside the city.
Visit Hot Springs CEO Steve Arrison said Thursday the commission is working with the hotel, which is adjacent to the Hot Springs Convention Center, to get it caught up. It won a $77,279 default judgment against the hotel’s parent company in December for unpaid ad commission taxes, but Arrison said in January that the commission would let the hotel pay down the past due amount rather than exercise its authority to close it.
“Hotel Hot Springs has been in arrears for several months in remitting to the advertising and promotion commission the tourism taxes it collects from its custom-
ers,” Arrison said in a statement he emailed The Sentinel-Record Thursday. “We worked with the hotel to establish a schedule for catching up with the arrears and to remain current in remitting the taxes it collects. The hotel remitted some payments but has fallen behind in remitting those taxes. They are currently
30 days behind with May tax collections unpaid and June’s collections due on July 20th.”
The Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration in June and May released the hotel from liens filed in December for
$20,936 in unpaid July 2017 state sales taxes and $19,290 in unpaid June 2017 sales taxes.
Assistant City Manager/City Clerk Lance Spicer said Thursday the parent company paid off back rent owed on a 50-year ground lease at 349 Malvern Ave. in April. It owed the city
$30,800 at the end of last year, paying $5,000 for a 30-day stay that took effect Dec. 22.
The company pays $2,000 a month to rent the half acre next to the hotel.
“As part of the agreement to stay the lease termination, they also had to keep their $2,000 a month payments current, which they did,” Spicer said. “The total debt was satisfied on April 15,
2018.”
The hotel has said it plans on building a full-service spa and fitness center on the city-owned lot. A Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. report shows the New Orleans bank that held the mortgage that would finance the construction project was closed by the Louisiana Office of Financial Institutions and went into FDIC receivership last year.
The Denver-based private equity firm that purchased the mortgage at auction last year amended it last month, according to Garland County property records. The hotel property now secures $35 million of debt instead of the almost $7 million provided for when the mortgage was filed in 2015.