The hotel at 2301 Wagner Ford Road will be renamed The Hotel Dayton, Heitz said. A website by that name was already up and taking reservations Tuesday afternoon.
“These guys are going to be putting a lot of money into it,” Heitz said of the new owners. He expects a “major” renovation of the hotel.
The hotel houses 231 rooms, three banquet rooms, a pool, a bar and a restaurant.
“It’s a big place,” Heitz said. “It just needs to be updated.”
The new owners will be emphasizing banquets, parties, wedding receptions and get-togethers, he said. They have applied to re-open the bar and the restaurant, as well, Heitz said.
Wichita, Kan.-based MK Hospitality Inc. is a professional hotel management and acquisition company.
A message seeking comment was left with the new owner.
Heitz acquired the hotel through a tax lien sale, a strategy he has employed before in Dayton. He also picked up the old Executive Lodge at 2401 Needmore Road in a similar tax lien sale.
Heitz paid $25,000 for the county’s tax lien on that property, a far lower amount than the $1.1 million that the former owners owed in taxes on that building at one time.
Heitz may be best known locally for demolishing the former Howard Paper plant smokestack off Edwin C. Moses Boulevard in 2011. He said he drove by that property for years on I-75 before deciding to do something about it. He finally bought it on July 1, 2010.
“I thought it gave Dayton a bad rap,” Heitz told the Dayton Daily News in 2013.
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