The owner of Belmond Charleston Place has paid off a development loan signed in 1984, two years before the hotel opened.
On Friday, Charleston Place LLC repaid in full a loan agreement dated Feb. 15, 1984, among the City of Charleston, the Charleston Central Local Development Corp. and the hotel’s owner, Belmond Ltd. said in a securities filing Monday. Belmond holds an indirect 19.9% stake in the hotel and manages it.
The filing calls the debt the UDAG loan. Its outstanding principal was $10 million, and accumulated interest totaled $16,818,607. The total owed was discounted by $4 million, which the filing said reflects, among other things, the present value of what would have been due when the loan matured on Dec. 31, 2028.
Belmond agreed to cover any taxes its partners in the hotel owe on income from the canceled debt, according to the filing.
To pay for it, the owner refinanced its $86 million loan on the hotel’s real and personal property with a new $112 million loan. The new loan matures in three years, requires no principal payments before then and carries an interest rate of LIBOR plus 2.35 percentage points, the filing said. The money also covers transaction costs and general corporate purposes.
The UDAG loan had a feature that mattered for any future deal. It entitled its lenders to 15% of the “net proceeds” from any sale or refinancing of the hotel, other than a refinancing of the $86 million first mortgage, Belmond said in its annual report in February. That report described the debt as a 1984 development loan from a public agency and said the hotel’s debt is non-recourse to Belmond.
Charleston Place opened in 1986 and has 434 rooms, according to the report. It finished a three-year renovation of all its guest rooms in December. Plans for this year include turning retail space into a sports bar with direct access to Market Street and renovating the ballroom and conference rooms. The hotel also owns the neighboring historic Riviera Theater, which has been remodeled as conference space and shops.
Although Belmond owns less than a fifth of the hotel, it manages the property under an exclusive long-term contract and has loans outstanding to it, so it includes the hotel’s results in its own financial statements, the report said.



