Foreclosure Nears for Ailing Grand Hotel

The financially troubled Grand Hotel will close and 160 employees could lose their jobs on Jan. 5 if its owners are unable reach a purchase agreement with prospective buyers, the hotel’s management said Wednesday.

Last week, a federal bankruptcy judge in Los Angeles gave Walt Disney Co. the green light to foreclose on the 30-year-old hotel, which is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. The Burbank-based entertainment company holds the mortgage on the 10-story building and 11-acre land parcel on West Freedman Way, near Harbor Boulevard.

Disney officials “told us to have the hotel cleared out and remove all our personal property by Jan. 5,” said Jim Jones, general manager of the Grand Hotel. Employees “were pretty bummed out. Some of them have worked here 15 years.”

He said that Disney did not exercise its option granted by the court to foreclose on hotel property such as televisions, chairs, lamps and china.

Disney officials had no comment on whether the hotel would close or on the fate of its employees.

Jones, though, says that the hotel could be saved if the partnership that owns the building, Grand Hotel and Associates of Santa Monica, can find a buyer before Jan. 5.

Jones, who was hired a year ago to try to rescue the ailing operation, said the Grand Hotel’s owners are negotiating with two separate investor groups.

Disney had an option to buy the 242-room hotel, once one of the premiere facilities in the Disneyland area, in 1992, but did not exercise it.