Sam Chang needs no introduction around these parts, but for those with little knowledge regarding the McSam Hotel Group boss, all you need to know is that he's the developer of the year, yet the Bronx would rather have a chicken slaughterhouse than one of his hotels. Also, he doesn't like Brooklyn but he does like this. Chang has made a fortune building cheap, ugly hotels on the quick and then selling them off just as fast, but Crain's reports today that our man Sam is in a rough spot. The credit crunch is hitting the McSam Hotel Group hard, jeopardizing the 25 hotels Chang currently has under construction, and the 15 more in the pipeline:
The most pressing problem, funding, comes after Mr. Chang raised hundreds of millions of dollars on Wall Street to build Comfort Inns, Best Westerns and other budget properties that investors had shunned. Mr. Chang's main financier, Credit Suisse, has pulled back dramatically. The entrepreneur is now turning to community banks, which demand that he contribute 40% of the total project cost—double what his former lenders required.
Yikes, but here's the real problem: What's worse, 25 new McSam hotels, or 25 partially-completed ones?
· Credit crunch slows hotelier's juggernaut [Crain's]
· Sam Chang Now Buying Shit He Won't Even Go See [Curbed]
· Constructoporn Destructoporn: Sam Chang Edition [Curbed]
Loading comments...