Eight days before workers covered up Holiday Inn signs at the Greenfield Road hotel, its former owners sued the general manager who blew the whistle on their attempts to cover up problems plaguing the facility.
Tom Showalter, of Lancaster, was named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed in Cobb County, Ga., by attorney Matthew M. Wilkins on behalf of Kronos Hotels LLC and its principals, Malaysian entrepreneurs Rajesh Mir and Charles Morais.
The Greenfield Road hotel was one of 16 in eight states Kronos acquired from Lodgian Inc. for $64.9 million in June 2007.
According to Showalter, problems (including paychecks that bounced, a restaurant closed for health violations, investigations into unlicensed alcohol sales, utility shutoffs and vendor services terminated for nonpayment of bills) began overwhelming the hotel soon after the Kronos takeover.
Showalter, who served as interim general manager during the transition from Lodgian to Kronos, began filing complaints with Kronos corporate officials in Georgia and was subsequently fired.
As the Sunday News began to investigate the former Holiday Inn, employees at the hotel were told they would be fired if they publicly voiced their grievances.
At that point, Showalter and a number of other former employees stepped forward to provide first-hand information on the hotel's condition and its goings-on.
The Sunday News also learned that Kronos-owned hotels across the country had problems similar to those at its Lancaster property.
Showalter subsequently established a Web site to document media reports about those hotels. He discovered Kronos Hotels owned the domain name
www.kronoshotels.com, but not
www.kronoshotelsllc.com. He bought it to host reprints of articles and chat rooms for Kronos workers to share information — and frustration.
That Web site is the focal point of the lawsuit.
The civil action was filed Nov. 12 by Wilkins, of the law firm King & Yaklin, Marietta, Ga. Wilkins did not respond to a message left at his office last week.
The lawsuit accuses Showalter of, among other things, libel, fraud, assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress and slander.
It seeks punitive damages in excess of $250,000.
Showalter said he is in the process of filing an answer denying all allegations listed in the lawsuit. He said he cannot afford legal representation.
Unemployed since his termination in December 2007, Showalter has been attempting to get back into the hospitality industry but believes his involvement in the Greenfield Road situation has made it hard for him to find work.
"After 18 years [in the business] it all came to a screeching halt when this happened," he said.
To Showalter, the lawsuit involves "a classic case of First Amendment rights." He noted, for example, that all the articles linked to his Web site were attributed to the original authors.
"I wrote no articles at all," he said.
As for the assault charge, Showalter said, "I have no clue where that came from.
"I must have one heck of a long arm to be trying to assault someone down in Georgia from Lancaster."
Showalter said he has no intention of giving up.
"Right now the site is a place where people all over the country can share stories and support one another," he said. "I can't back down.
"In my life, I haven't done a lot of selfless things," he added. "But every now and then you feel you have to do the right thing, and right now I feel as if I'm doing the right thing."
The Holiday Inn signs were covered Nov. 20, almost seven weeks after the hotel lost its franchise tag and was told to remove the signs.
When Stephen Boggs, a spokesman for Intercontinental Hotels Group (owner of the Holiday Inn brand), was asked if IHG pressured the hotel to finally cover the signs, he said only, "This [covering] would be in line with being terminated from the [Holiday Inn] system."
With Kronos out of the picture, ownership has transferred to Hyperion Hotels and Resorts LLC. The principal owners of Hyperion is Stillwater Capital Partners, a New York investment firm that helped Kronos complete its initial 2007 purchase.
Hyperion has hired Prism Hotels and Resorts to manage the hotel.
When the turnover was first announced, Al Whitehouse, Prism's vice president of acquisitions, said talks were under way to restore the Holiday Inn franchise.
Last week, Whitehouse said, "We are still talking to [IHG]. This is all part of the process."
Whitehouse said Prism is "still in the initial stages" of assessing the situation at the hotel.
When Prism assumed control, it inherited the unpaid creditors, liens, a stalled renovation project and a shuttered restaurant.
Nov. 14, state Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement officers filed charges against the former owners and former general manager Jayshul Sharma for selling liquor without a license at the hotel.
Whitehouse said Prism intends to operate the hotel for the long term and restore it to a full-service operation.
Asked about a timetable, Whitehouse said, "We think we'll have our plans formulated by the end of the year."
Chip Smedley is a staff writer for the Sunday News. E-mail him at csmedley@lnpnews.com.
