For many of us, the term Watergate brings back bad memories of politicians gone bad. We forget that the scandal is named after the Watergate Complex, a group of 5 buildings near the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
The hotel that was attached to the complex failed in 2007 but was purchased yesterday by a European real estate management company. They plan on returning the hotel to it’s former glory while keeping the option of turning some of the rooms into condos if the market will accept it.
Euro Watergate Hotel, a holding company of Euro Capital Properties, closed on a cash deal worth about $45 million for the landmark overlooking the Potomac River, part of a complex of buildings made famous by the 1972 burglary that led to President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation. The sale comes 11 months after former owner Monument Realty defaulted on a $40 million loan, forcing the bank that foreclosed to sell it last summer at auction.
Euro Capital principal Jacques Cohen said the 12-story hotel, mothballed since 2007 and neglected for years, will be restored to a trophy property worthy of a “very upper upscale market.” Rooms will fetch more than $300 a night, he said.
“There’s no other property in walking distance of Georgetown and that close to the White House and the Kennedy Center,” Cohen said, “and that has the most gorgeous views in Washington.”
The Watergate became famous in the early 1970s when a group of men were caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee's office in the Watergate complex. The men were found to have ties to the White House, and a long political scandal ensued, culminating in Nixon's resignation in 1974 in the face of congressional impeachment proceedings.