For sale: Hotel that brought down Nixon

The Watergate Hotel, the faded jewel in the Washington complex where nefarious deeds brought down President Richard Nixon, is to go under the auctioneer's hammer tomorrow.

The Watergate has been closed since 2007. Its most recent owner first tussled with residents about renovation plans and finally ran out of money. A 30-day repossession notice expired last week and a Washington auctioneer said it would start taking offers.

As the moon landing anniversary and the death of the television news anchor Walter Cronkite unleash a tide of reminiscences about the Nixon era, the bank that has seized the hotel hopes bidders will see an opportunity to restore the tarnished symbol of the time.

Perhaps for as little as US$1 million ($1.54 million), a buyer could get its hands on a 12-storey, 251-room Washington landmark, in the Foggy Bottom area of the city's north-west, overlooking the Potomac River.

It was here that Nixon's burglars slept before breaking into the adjoining offices of the Democratic Party in 1972, a crime whose discovery revealed a trail that led directly to the White House. The Watergate complex, which also includes three apartment buildings, two office blocks and a shopping centre, opened in 1967 and the hotel at its core was a grandiose building adorned with marble floors, old-fashioned furnishings and a portrait of the Queen.

Today, though, it is closed and its lobby is strewn with abandoned furniture, awaiting in vain a US$170 million renovation.

Monument Realty, which paid US$45 million for the hotel in 2004, had first hoped to turn it into luxury apartments, only to reverse course in the face of local opposition. The company's financing partner, Lehman Brothers, went bust last northern autumn.

The new owner will have to pay more than US$100,000 a month in security even before thinking about renovating and reopening.

Yet auctioneer Paul Cooper, of Alex Cooper Auctioneers, says he has already fielded expressions of interest from bidders around the world, said to include the Middle East and London.

- INDEPENDENT