Texas-based Precise Hotel Management, LLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the face of $2,096,564.03 in liens on a Dallas-Fort Worth area Holiday Inn Express filed by three separate contractors.
PHM — based in Carrolton, Texas — voluntarily petitioned the United States Bankruptcy Court of the Northern Texas District for Chapter 11. Chapter 11 is commonly known as a “reorganization bankruptcy,” and seeks to keep the business afloat through a process that allows creditors to claim unpaid dues as the company seeks to avoid fully selling their assets in the aim of continuing business operations.
While it is common for initial Chapter 11 filings to contain a list of its top 20 highest creditors, the petition document filed on August 2, 2021, did not contain any.
However, there have been three liens filed on the Holiday Inn Express and Suites property located at 113 Paluxy Summit Boulevard, Glen Rose, Texas from as many contractors prior to the filing. These liens individually range from as low as five figures to a whopping $1,403,686.19.
Mechanics liens are a legal strategy for contractors to garner extra attention for purported unpaid work, allowing entities or individuals who have performed work on a property to affix a claim to the property itself instead of its owners or residents. This process prioritizes the claim in a more intensive manner than other methods because the claim is affixed to the property and impacts resale value until resolved
On March 25, 2020, Granbury, Texas’ Granbury Door and Window submitted an affidavit for a lien totaling the $18,288.84 against the Holiday Inn Express property address in the southern-DFW area suburb.
According to the document, Granbury entered into a contract, listed as Exhibit A, with PHM on September 16, 2019, where the former would later begin inspecting curtain walls and windows on the hotel’s second and third floors along with employing two service workers on a 120-foot man lift where they repaired 46 leaking windows on the property over three business days, concluding on November 19.
Listed as Exhibits C and D in the document, the business sent PHM two later returned letters requesting payments on both January 30 and February 20, 2020, respectively.
PHM’s Holiday Inn Express location was later met with a lien filed on November 2 of 2020 totaling $674,589 from Ontario, Canada’s Emergency Response Group Inc.
The lien affidavit, composed by company president Mark Kowal, claimed that his group performed “emergency water mitigation services” following an insurance claim of water intrusion on the property at some point.
Kowal stated that his group’s work of installing and running drying equipment, along with removing wet structural materials, roof repair, and other cleaning services were not paid.
Lastly, the largest lien claim amount filed against the Holiday Inn Express site is the aforementioned $1,403,686.19 from Pherian Texas, LLC — another emergency-based contracting company.
Filed on June 28, 2021, the lien affidavit document states that Pherian “furnished material and labor to improve the Property,” although no specifics on what procedures and services were provided that resulted in an almost $1.5 million unpaid bill were specified.
The company’s site highlights that their “professional crew specializes in services like post-disaster repair and restoration, general contracting, demolition, and rebuilding.”
The high billing prices suggest a large natural disaster like Winter Storm Uri drove the biggest impact to the hotel management company’s Holiday Inn structure, as all provided services dates predate the February 2021 mega-storm — suggesting long-term structural issues with water before record snowfall arrived.
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While it is likely that these three parties are considered amongst the 20 largest creditors to PHM’s bankruptcy filing, that wasn’t clear in the initial petition or confirmed by outside sources at time of reporting. However, court listings online indicate that a meeting of creditors had occurred via telephone on August 9.