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The Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame has filed for bankruptcy, the Tulsa World reported. The news broke in the middle of an eviction hearing before a special judge in the Tulsa County District Court Small Claims Division. Jason McIntosh, executive director of the Jazz Hall of Fame, confirmed the bankruptcy filing but declined to comment further at the advice of counsel. The Tulsa County Industrial Authority filed a lawsuit in November seeking to terminate its lease with the Jazz Hall and recover $8,474 in past-due taxes and utilities. The lawsuit also alleges that the Jazz Hall fell so far behind in its utility payments that electricity to the building was turned off on Oct. 19. The Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame leases the Union Depot, at First Street and Cincinnati Avenue, a facility bought and refurbished by the county with $4 million in Vision 2025 funds. It pays $1 a year in rent and is required to cover tax, insurance and utility costs. The bankruptcy filing puts an automatic stay on the Industrial Authority’s case until the bankruptcy proceedings are completed.

Wardman Park Hotel was approved to borrow an initial $3 million in bankruptcy to preserve the historic property and find a buyer, despite objections from its former manager Marriott International Inc., Bloomberg News reported. Wardman Hotel Owner LLC, the debtor for the century-old Washington, D.C., hotel, can make an initial draw on its $8 million debtor-in-possession loan while it looks for a buyer for the property, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey ruled in a Delaware court yesterday. Wardman Park received the loan from a unit of Pacific Life Insurance Co., its owner and pre-bankruptcy lender, with a six-month term and 5% annual interest rate, according to filings. Wardman Hotel Owner owed Pacific Life $130.5 million as of Dec. 21, according to court papers. “It’s time to hit the refresh button,” Laura Davis Jones of Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones, an attorney for Wardman Hotel Owner, said in the hotel’s first-day bankruptcy hearing. Selling the Wardman Park is the best way to maximize value for all stakeholders, she said. Wardman Park Hotel, which opened in 1918 at the height of the Spanish Flu pandemic, filed for bankruptcy this week after closing in late March due to the outbreak of COVID-19. The historic hotel is one of the largest in Washington, D.C., and has played host to numerous presidential inaugural balls and been home to former presidents Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson, according to court filings. Marriott, which had the contract to manage the hotel until “minutes before” the bankruptcy filing, according to its attorneys, filed a raft of objections to the first-day motions, calling the move “a bad faith bankruptcy.” Marriott alleged in court filings that the Wardman bankruptcy filing is an attempt to avoid paying Marriott claims awarded by a Maryland state court.

The coronavirus pandemic has ravaged the hospitality, travel and retail industries since its outset in March, when shutdowns and restrictions meant to contain the virus cost more than 520,000 U.S. service workers their jobs. This workforce is under renewed pressure amid a resurgence in coronavirus cases: 498,000 leisure and hospitality jobs disappeared last month, the Labor Department reported Friday. Restaurant and bar workers comprised the bulk of those losses, roughly 3 in 4, an onslaught that disproportionately affected women and workers of color, the Washington Post reported. Overall employment in the sector has fallen 23 percent during the pandemic, outpacing every other industry, federal data shows. With new rounds of state-mandated restaurant and bar restrictions, and winter weather limiting outdoor dining, food services accounted for 372,000 job losses in December. That backslide obliterated significant hiring gains in industries like professional services, retail and construction, and the United States recorded a net loss of 140,000 jobs in December — its first negative showing since April.

The owner of seven top-notch hotels in and near the Bay Area in California has warned regulators that it faces a severe cash squeeze and possible bankruptcy — but also says it hopes a financing package provided by a major investor could help ward off its money struggles, the San Jose Mercury News reported. The scramble by Ashford Hospitality to land financing in the wake of its warning that it was facing potential bankruptcy are the latest indicators of the coronavirus-linked financial and economic roller coaster that confronts the lodging and travel sectors. Texas-based Ashford Hospitality Trust, which owns hotels in 27 states including California, warned in a Dec. 22 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it is suffering liquidity problems that are serious enough to shove the company into a chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. However, in a Dec. 28 filing with the SEC, Ashford Hospitality stated that it had secured a financing commitment of at least $200 million from Oaktree Capital Management that could dramatically ease the lodging company’s financial squeeze. Texas-based Ashford Hospitality’s lodging properties include six hotels in the Bay Area and one hotel in the Monterey Bay area, according to the company’s website. The hotel owner said that it believes it has enough cash to fund its operations “into the early part of fiscal year 2021,” Ashford Hospitality stated in a recent SEC filing Ashford’s fiscal year is identical to the calendar year.

AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., the world’s largest cinema operator, plans to offer as many as 50 million more shares as it tries to stave off a bankruptcy filing, Bloomberg News reported. The offering adds onto 200 million shares the Leawood, Kansas-based company registered earlier this month, it said in a filing yesterday. AMC warned again in the new document that it might have to seek an in-court or out-of-court restructuring, which could wipe out its equity investors. The company has said that it needs to raise $750 million. AMC declined again after setting plans for a new stock offering. Movie-theater owners have been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. The superhero sequel “Wonder Woman 1984” had the biggest theatrical opening of the crisis last weekend but generated just $16.7 million at the North American box office. Its studio, AT&T Inc.’s Warner Bros., said only 39 percent of U.S. cinemas were open, at limited capacity.

A disgruntled creditor of Speedcast International Ltd., which opposed a financial restructuring of the satellite-communications company, has obtained clearance to submit a late takeover offer to buy the company out of bankruptcy, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. “We want to bid as soon as we can,” said Al Hogan, a lawyer for creditor Black Diamond Capital Management LLC, during a hearing Wednesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston. Subject to outstanding due diligence, Hogan said that “Black Diamond would absolutely prefer to own this asset than to see it sold to Centerbridge at the price under the current plan.” Black Diamond’s emergence as Speedcast’s potential acquirer is an unexpected twist that arose during a multiday trial over a plan backed by private-equity firm Centerbridge Partners LP. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Marvin Isgur is allowing Black Diamond to bid for Speedcast and formulate an alternative transaction to get the company out of chapter 11 protection, after he expressed concerns about approving the Centerbridge-backed plan. Speedcast came to bankruptcy carrying about $689 million in long-term debt, which the company intends to cut through a financial restructuring. The company anticipates emerging from chapter 11 in the first quarter of 2021.

Two hotels in Kissimmee went up for auction this month, and an Orlando hotel is facing the block early next year, as one expert warns that a “tsunami” of sales and foreclosures could be on the horizon, the Orlando Sentinel reported. “There’s a lot of pain out there,” said Carlos Rodriguez, CEO of Driftwood Hospitality Management, adding that only cash infusions from the government or lenders would stop the wave. But with news of the vaccine rollout and approval of the second stimulus package, Rodriguez and other market professionals see reasons to be optimistic, especially about Central Florida. “The hotels here in town going into the pandemic were actually in a very good position,” said Paul Sexton, senior vice president at Hospitality Real Estate Counselors. While data analyst group STR doesn’t see the tourism returning to 2019 highs for three or four years, Sexton said most hotel owners learned valuable lessons in the recession of 2008 that gave them breathing room. “The banks did a better job of not lending too much money,” he said. “The owners did a better job of not taking too much money.” With a capital cushion and PPP money from the first round of stimulus in March, hotel owners are playing a waiting game. The new stimulus package likely will deliver millions of dollars more to hotels under the Payroll Protection Program. “The question for owners, effectively, is can they outrun the pandemic?” Sexton said.