Fresh blow for troubled Maxim as Dakota Hotel put up for sale

Sources say the largely unlet development, funded by Tritax in a £330m debt-backed package, is hitting potential trade.

It is thought the Dakota sellers – a syndicate of investors – are testing the market and have not fixed a price, seen as further evidence of the weak market for property sales.

The property, which also includes an empty two-storey office building, is let until 2031 to Dakota Eurocentral, part-owned by McCulloch.

A sales agent from Jones Lang Lasalle said: “We have not been given a specific target [price], normally we would quote this but on this occasion we have just gone out to see where the market sits for an asset like this. We are really inviting offers.”

Ben Thomson, chairman of Urbicus, which owns the debt that financed the hotel, expects potential buyers to redevelop the adjoining office to extend the hotel’s conference facilities. But the economic climate has seen the hotels business slump.

Recent figures from accountancy firm PKF showed that revenues at hotels in Scotland fell by 7.3 per cent in November as operators cut their prices to try to attract visitors.

Dakota Eurocentral, a “special purpose vehicle” representing the management company, does not disclose its income, but its most recent accounts to the year to the end of 2010 show it made a loss of £435,330.

“I don’t think there will be many buyers out there right now,” said one source.

The debt backing the hotel was snapped up last year as part of a £300 million portfolio Urbicus acquired on a deeply discounted basis from the failed lender Anglo Irish Bank.

Urbicus is led by its chairman, financier Thomson, and property investor Mark Shaw, who also runs a firm called Hazledene.

The debt firm is itself backed by Elliott Associates, a Manhattan-based hedge fund run by billionaire investor Paul Singer.

The sale of the Anglo book to Urbicus last year was the second deal done on distressed loans secured against Scottish property. US private equity company Cerberus also bought a £95m loan from Lloyds Banking Group, which was secured against the Maxim business park, for £30m.

McCulloch, along with his former business partnerCoulthard, had initially launched an ambitious scheme to develop 40 to 50 Dakota Hotels across the UK, raising hundreds of millions from investors. The first, in Nottingham, was named best new hotel in the UK in 2005 by the influential Condé Nast Traveller magazine.

But in 2007 the partnership between McCulloch, who made his name and fortune with the development of the Malmaison chain of hotels, and Coulthard descended into acrimony. The duo put their Monaco-based hotel, the Columbus, up for sale. The Scottish racing driver, who was a neighbour of McCulloch in Monaco, also put a winding up order on their Nottingham venture, which is now managed by Holiday Inn.