Free Republic

The Westin Tempe faces a potential foreclosure sale after failing to make its loan payments. The lender for the 290-room hotel near Seventh Street and Mill Avenue in downtown Tempe filed a notice of trustee sale earlier this week, according Maricopa County records. Such notices inform borrowers and property owners they are facing a potential foreclosure and auction sale. The notice said that the 18-story hotel, which opened in 2021, will be auctioned off to the highest bidder on April 24 at the Arizona Superior Court building in downtown Phoenix. The construction loan for the Westin Tempe was issued in...

The Westin Book Cadillac hotel is facing foreclosure due to plummeting revenues amid the pandemic, its owner tells Crain's Detroit Business. The 33-story tower was rehabbed in 2008 for $180 million. According to Crain's, owner John Ferchill is underwater with $77 million in commercial mortgage-backed securities debt that has been delinquent since May. The property is valued at $75 million. Ferchill says he's been unable to come to an agreement with his lender, Citi Real Estate Funding Inc.

BOSTON --A hotel employee fatally stabbed a co-worker after an argument Friday afternoon, Boston police said. Police said the male victim was found in an employee area of the Westin Copley Place in Boston's Back Bay at about 4:30 p.m. The man, who was about 30, was taken to the Boston Medical Center where he was pronounced dead, police said. Police have not released his name. Ivan Sosa, 37, of Boston's Dorchester neighborhood was arrested and faces murder and assault charges, police said. He was to be arraigned Monday morning.

ASSOCIATED PRESS WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- A major hotel chain is going smoke-free next month and will add $200 to the bill of anyone who violates the policy, an executive said Monday. Westin Hotels & Resorts is banning smoking indoors and poolside at all 77 of its properties in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean, said senior Vice President Sue Brush. Smokers will have to go to a designated outdoor area, she said. Enica Thompson, spokeswoman for the American Hotel & Lodging Association, said Westin is the first major American chain to go smoke-free and predicted that "many of...

I read the news today, Oh Boy! People aren't reading newspapers as much as they used to. At the Washington Post, circulation is down almost 3% in just one year; the Los Angeles Times is down over 6%. Even The Wall Street Journal is down almost 1%. The New York Times has bragging rights simply by remaining flat. And, the situation may be even worse for smaller newspapers in some markets. Newspapers certainly aren't alone in the reports of decline. Until now, the headlines have screamed at us about declines in network news. It's said that misery loves company, but...

Tim Karr of Democracy In Action.org last ditch effort to the left: "MediaChannel.org's "News Dissector" Danny Schechter, WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception) is a hard-hitting feature length documentary is inspired in part by Danny's study of mainstream media's reporting of the Iraq War. The film opens this weekend in selected theaters in three cities and soon will be "rolling out" nationwide. Like Fahrenheit 911 and Outfoxed, WMD can reach large audiences with a powerful critique of a media failure. Two weeks ago, the presidents of the news divisions of NBC, CBS and ABC admitted for the first time that their...

ABC News President David Westin warned against the proliferation of opinion commentary in the news media at the Institute of Politics’ John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum yesterday night. “The more time we express our opinions, the less time we have to talk about the facts,” Westin said. “Unfortunately, opinion is driving out facts too often in most of what we see on television today.”

ABC News' president has cautioned reporters that their mission in reporting on the CBS document story is not to stick it to a competitor. ABC is hot on the story, breaking ground by unearthing a document examiner who warned a CBS producer of the Bush records’ questionable status, but nobody's gloating. In a memo sent last week, ABC News President David Westin issued a directive for covering the allegedly forged memos cited on 60 Minutes. “We need to stick as close to the facts and what we know about them as possible,” he wrote, because, noting, ABC could be in...

WASHINGTON – The Starwood hotel chain says the pro-Democrat tilt of individual company campaign contributors does not reflect corporate policy in deciding which cable news channels it makes available to its guests. Nonetheless, Fox News Channel, recently denounced by leading Democat politicians, has been unable to secure a corporate endorsement from Starwood, even though FNC beats all other cable news channels combined in ratings. "Starwood has no objections to carrying Fox News programming on our properties," the hotelier’s spokesman Mark Ricci told NewsMax 2½ weeks after our initial request for comment and about a week after we reported that (unlike...

Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com Thursday, July 31, 2003 WASHINGTON – A major hotel chain that will not make top-rated Fox News Channel available to guests has a record of individual campaign contributions heavily favoring Democrats. Federal Election Commission records reviewed by NewsMax.com show that among those officials who list Starwood or a Starwood hotel property as their workplace favored Democrats by better than 3 to 1 over Republicans for the 1999-2000 election cycle. Starwood's hotels include Sheraton, Westin, St. Regis, Luxury Connection, Four Points and, ironically, W. In the 2001-2002 cycle, a midterm election period, the amount contributed was considerably smaller...

WASHINGTON – A major hotel chain that will not make top-rated Fox News Channel available to guests has a record of individual campaign contributions heavily favoring Democrats. Federal Election Commission records reviewed by NewsMax.com show that among those officials who list Starwood or a Starwood hotel property as their workplace favored Democrats by better than 3 to 1 over Republicans for the 1999-2000 election cycle. Starwood's hotels include Sheraton, Westin, St. Regis, Luxury Connection, Four Points and, ironically, W.