The checks were in the mail.
More importantly, they cleared.
Employees at the former Holiday Inn on Greenfield Road said they received three weeks' worth of pay Friday from Prism Hotels, the new firm employed to manage operations at the hotel after the former owners, Kronos Hotels of Atlanta, were ousted last week.
Hotel workers had picketed the facility Oct. 24, when they did not receive checks on their regularly-scheduled payday.
Al Whitehouse, vice president of acquisitions for Prism Hotels, said checks could not be issued last week because Prism "didn't have access to the [payroll] systems."
The former owners (Kronos), Whitehouse said, did not provide the appropriate information to Prism in time to allow the Texas-based management firm to complete the payroll.
Whitehouse said Friday's checks would cover employees' "back pay and current pay."
"I can't speak for the previous owners [Kronos]," said Whitehouse. But he offered some insight into the details of the takeover that ousted Kronos two weeks ago.
Hyperion Hotels and Resorts, Whitehouse said, is "a brand-new entity" that now owns the 16 hotels Kronos purchased in June 2007.
"The employees at these hotels are employees of Hyperion," Whitehouse said. "We are a management company in the traditional sense."
The principal owners of Hyperion, Whitehouse explained, are Stillwater Capital Partners, a New York investment firm that helped Kronos complete its initial 2007 purchase.
"These are the good guys," Whitehouse said. "Hyperion has the [financial] wherewithal to deal with the problems" facing the former Kronos-owned properties.
Those problems involve liens for non-payment of taxes, charges of fraud related to bounced checks, payments owed to vendors and lapsed liquor licenses.
Employees in Lancaster did not receive payment to cover checks that had bounced in the past few months, but Whitehouse said Prism was working on all financial problems they inherited.
"Right now, we are trying to quantify all of that," Whitehouse said.
When asked if Kronos President and Chief Executive Officer Charles Morais was involved with Hyperion, Whitehouse said, "That is absolutely not the case."
Morais was recently arrested in Marietta, Ga., on charges of being a fugitive from justice. Wanted in Arkansas on charges of fraud related to bounced checks, Morais had left that state and gone to Georgia, forcing Arkansas officials to issue a warrant for his arrest.
A spokesman in the Pope County, Ark., district attorney's office said the case was active, but he couldn't comment further.
Whitehouse said, "Our plan is really to try to get our arms around the current situation and quickly resolve all of the issues.
"It would be counterproductive for me to say we can have this taken care of in the next few weeks," he added. "Once we have our plan in place we will have a better idea" of how and when the problems will be resolved.
Prism was founded in 1983 and currently manages properties in 11 states and in the Caribbean. According to information posted on the company's Web site, its portfolio contains more than 6,000 rooms in those locations.
Hotel industry publications report Prism has a well-established reputation in the hospitality industry, and is known as a company that is often called in to rescue troubled properties and return them to a profitable status.
Chip Smedley is a staff writer for the Sunday News. E-mail him at csmedley@lnpnews.com.
