The Hotel Brunswick could be a moneymaker for a buyer with strong local ties, its current owner said Tuesday.

Hamid Zahedi is asking nearly $8 1/2 million for the property, more than double its $3.4 million construction cost in 1970 or the $3 million he paid for it in 2005. The New York-based investor has, since then, put more than $6 million into site renovations.

In recent years, the Brunswick has been plagued with problems, including a shutdown for housing and fire code violations that shuttered the property for 10 months.

Zahedi is eager to sell. But he said Tuesday he thinks the buyer will need a solid connection with Lancaster city government.

"We'd like to sell it to any party that is interested. However, it's an ideal for a local party," he said during a telephone interview.

"Someone from outside won't get the sort of cooperation they need in Lancaster."

Distance has been a problem in maintaining the property, Zahedi admitted.

"But we just think there's an opportunity there for somebody. It would improve the city," he said. "And if they're local, the city will cooperate with them. It will be a win-win for everyone."

The list price of $8,495,000 is "significantly below replacement cost," according to an eight-page listing brochure provided by Kevin Fry, vice president of Prudential Homesale Services Group's commercial division and listing agent for the property.

"The Brunswick has been on the market for quite some time," Fry said Monday. "The signs have been up for six months now."

The 225-room, full-service hotel has guest rooms on nine floors, plus a lobby, bar and restaurant level and an additional 12,000-square-foot meeting-room floor, the brochure states.

Standing on a lot of approximately 20,000 square feet, the building contains about 150,000 square feet of guestrooms and amenities.

"The Hotel Brunswick has been, and can once again become a major player in the Lancaster County Pennsylvania Dutch Country hospitality industry, one of the top ten tourism attractions in the United States," the brochure states.

It calls the Brunswick a "well maintained asset whose performance has suffered recently due to absentee ownership."

Zahedi said Tuesday the Brunswick needs further renovations, including a long-held plan to shift the lobby from the second floor to the first, as well as a drop-off lane, either on Queen Street or Chestnut.

"But that will need the city's cooperation," he said. "That's why the (owner) needs local ties."

According to a history of the site posted on the hotel's website, the property can boast of being "the longest continuous hotel operation in the United States."

The original 2 1/2-story stone building that opened there in 1776 operated for 84 years as a hostelry, first as the Hofnagle Hotel, then the Sheaf of Wheat, the North American and finally the American Hotel.

The building was replaced with a three-story brick structure in 1860. It was known successively as the Caldwell House, the Heister House and the Imperial Hotel.

The first Hotel Brunswick, designed by famed local architect C. Emlen Urban, was built there in 1914. It was demolished in 1967 to make way for a modern Hilton Inn.

The hotel was acquired in 1976 by Penn Mutual Life Insurance Co., which redubbed the property Hotel Brunswick. The name stuck until 2001, when it became the Ramada Inn Brunswick Conference Center. The Ramada flag was removed after a bankruptcy sale in 2005, and the name reverted to Hotel Brunswick.

The hotel was closed by the city in 2009 after fire and housing inspectors filed a seven-page list of code violations, including holes in the walls, wiring on sprinkler pipes, mildewed carpet and an inoperable fire-alarm system.

City officials said then the hotel had been notified of some of the violations as early as 2006. It reopened early in 2010.

tknapp@lnpnews.com