Investor TerraCap Partners II buys Bonita Springs Lodge, Suites

BUYER: Bonita Springs Hospitality LLC (principal: W. Stephen Hagenbuckle), Cape Coral

SELLER: Stearns Bank National Association

PROPERTY: 28600 Trails Edge Blvd., Bonita Springs

PRICE: $2.85 million

PREVIOUS PRICE: $1.08 million, May 1997

LAW FIRM ON DEED: Williams Parker Harrison Dietz & Getzen PA, Sarasota

PLANS, DESCRIPTION: Cape Coral investment fund TerraCap Partners II purchased the 87-room Bonita Springs Lodge and Suites for $2.85 million.

The price equated to $32,782 per room.

Located just off U.S. 41 and three miles from the beach, the hotel is built around a lake. It also features a lakeside patio, outdoor pool, laundry facilities and fitness center.

The 12-year-old former AmericInn was taken back by lender Stearns Bank in early 2011.

“With a lot of bank-owned properties they just operate them until they can sell them,” says W. Stephen Hagenbuckle, managing principal of the fund's manager, TerraCap Management Corp. “If the handle of a faucet brakes off they take the room out of service. It has a lot of potential; it just hasn't been managed well and kept up to date.”

Another reason for the purchase was the price, which Hagenbuckle and Robert Gray, another TerraCap Management managing principal, describe as below replacement costs.

The new ownership plans to renovate the hotel with a more modern look, as well as improve the lobby, bedding and technology. The improvements have been budgeted at around $1 million.

TerraCap Partners II has retained an on-site manager for the hotel and hired Twenty/Twenty Worldwide Hospitality LLC to assist in managing it.

“We want raise it up to a level where any flag would want us,” he says. “Then we'll decide whether we're going to flag it or not.”

TerraCap Partners II and the first investment fund of TerraCap Partners have acquired a number of real estate properties recently. The funds purchased 171 acres of land on Jones Loop Road in Punta Gorda for $11.75 million, 78 acres in southern Punta Gorda for $798,000, 10 acres in Estero for $1.46 million, the 20.73-acre Palmira Village land in Bonita Springs for $1.46 million and 26.31 acres of Emerson Square Boulevard in Fort Myers for $1.7 million.