ST. LOUIS — The abrupt closing of The Last Hotel earlier this month jolted dozens of guests who’d planned to stay there during a busy weekend.

But the hotel’s difficulties were foretold in numerous lawsuits across three states. Those filings showed how a long-simmering feud between its two owners ultimately doomed the project that opened less than six years ago after a $54 million renovation of the historic former headquarters of the International Shoe Co.

Business partners in the duo’s orbit became collateral damage, with accusations that an executive at one of the project’s lenders inappropriately accepted gifts, while a hotelier appointed as a receiver begged a court to cut him loose due to the fighting.

The hotel’s majority owner, Mike Qualizza, called the closure a “tragedy that could have easily been avoided.”

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Yet all signs pointed to an impending failure of the hotel at 1501 Washington Avenue.

The hotel owes more than $118,000 in unpaid earnings or payroll taxes, over $50,000 in hotel taxes and $40,000 in property taxes. Two of its lenders have sued, one of which won a judgment for a $13 million loan.

All the while, Qualizza, of Austin, Texas, and his longtime business partner, Neil Freeman of Florida, were fighting against each other in court, unable to reach consensus about how to run the place or whom to sell it to.

“We literally could have been out of this hotel three years ago,” Qualizza, in a Friday interview, said of the failure to agree on a sale.

Built in 1909, the International Shoe Co. building in downtown St. Louis reopened as The Last Hotel, which refers to the “last,” a tool used for shoemaking as photographed on Tuesday, March 18, 2025.

Freeman said in court filings that Qualizza had accused him of securities and mail fraud, saying he had grown “unhinged and confrontational.” He accused Qualizza of using $210,000 in funds from The Last Hotel for his own personal legal fees. Records even indicate Freeman obtained court orders blocking Qualizza from direct communication with him.

Freeman did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Qualizza and Freeman are longtime players in the federal New Market Tax Credit program that helped fund The Last Hotel’s construction. In 2002, they founded a firm that specialized in the complicated financing mechanism, Chicago-based Urban Development Fund, which claims to have overseen over $620 million in tax credits.

Qualizza said the duo’s dispute began after he discovered “securities fraud” when Freeman “stole a bunch of money from me” by having him invest in a fake company.

He declined to comment on Freeman’s allegation about his use of the hotel’s funds or share more details on his allegations, but The Last Hotel has borne the brunt of the falling-out.

Lender trouble

The hotel was well-received when it first opened in June 2019, complete with well-regarded restaurant and rooftop pool.

But less than a year later, the pandemic upended the hotel market and the broader downtown economy.

In April 2021, Freeman alleged in court filings that Qualizza unilaterally terminated a management agreement and installed his own company as manager of the hotel. That broke a franchise agreement with Hyatt, costing it a major flag affiliation. Hyatt pursued litigation against the hotel’s owners, eventually resulting in a $1.4 million settlement for which, Freeman claims in court filings, Qualizza didn’t pay his share.

Just 18 months after the hotel opened, U.S. Bank in January 2021 sued the developers over an unpaid $12 million construction loan. The developers countersued, accusing the bank of damaging the project by withholding financing that left it stuck with a high-interest temporary loan. The litigation is still pending.

Online, Qualizza has gone after U.S. Bank, accusing it of “organized crime” and claiming it’s “headed for a bank run.”

Qualizza alleges in court documents U.S. Bank sued over The Last Hotel’s loan due to “personal animus” against him because of his political beliefs and that the bank seeks to “weaponize their banking power for their woke political principles.” Qualizza appears to lean right politically, cheering FBI Director Kash Patel’s confirmation online and posting that former President Joe Biden was “bought and paid for by China and Ukraine.”

There is some question about how viable the project even was to begin with and how much a friendship between two leaders in the New Market Tax Credit world influenced the deal. Qualizza claimed to have brought over $500 million in deals to U.S. Bank over the years, and he was friends with Zach Boyers, the CEO of U.S. Bank’s tax credit subsidiary, U.S. Bancorp Impact Finance.

In a deposition Boyers took as part of the lawsuit, he admitted to accepting tickets from Qualizza for several concerts between 2016 and 2018, including Beyonce, Jay Z, Kendrick Lamar and U2 in Chicago. Qualizza also gave him multiple room nights at the Roosevelt New Orleans hotel around New Year’s Eve in 2019.

Boyers in his deposition maintained the gifts were unrelated to the financing the bank would extend to the hotel project, though he also admitted he was reprimanded for accepting them after an internal investigation by the bank in early 2020.

A sign taped to the front door of the The Last Hotel on Washington Avenue alerts passerbys of their closure as photographed on Tuesday, March 18, 2025.

“I offered to pay him for the tickets. He said he’d cut up my check. I said I’d get him back someday and I thought we had decades to do so,” Boyers said in his deposition. “It was a mistake on my part.”

U.S. Bank declined to comment.

By September 2022, Freeman filed a lawsuit in St. Louis asking the court to appoint a receiver to manage the hotel. Qualizza filed a lawsuit in Chicago to block it.

The litigation continued behind the scenes for years while The Last Hotel deteriorated. Guest reviews began turning negative. The bar was rarely open. The rooftop pool was dirty and rooms poorly cleaned.

In various court filings, Qualizza and Freeman said they were “deadlocked” in the management of the company that operates the hotel. By last March, even Qualizza asked a Chicago judge to appoint a receiver who could finalize a sale of the hotel.

The hotel was at imminent risk of closure, Qualizza wrote in court filings. One of its lenders, Octagon Credit Partners, had recently obtained a $13.3 million judgment against the developers.

“Once the hotel closes its doors it will become substantially less valuable and, perhaps, no longer saleable as a hotel and will likely be demolished and turned into a parking lot,” Qualizza’s lawyer wrote in a March 2024 motion in the Cook County lawsuit.

Looking for a buyer

Qualizza said in a court filing last year he had a buyer ready to close on a $29 million offer for the hotel — just over half the cost of the development. He accused Freeman of refusing to agree to an earlier $34 million offer. Freeman said Qualizza wouldn’t accept a $31 million offer in 2022.

“He only wants it sold when it’s someone he brings to the table,” Qualizza said in an interview Friday.

A sale never happened, even after the Cook County judge in May appointed a receiver to oversee one.

On March 6, the hotel finally shuttered. In the days after, a manager at the adjacent City Museum said he saw people walking out of the hotel with televisions and refrigerators and reported it to police. Qualizza said in an interview he suspected it was theft from employees who had worked for the receiver appointed to manage the hotel.

That receiver had recently gotten a court to let it off the job. A week before the hotel closed, a Cook County judge granted the request from the hotel’s receiver, Robert Habeeb of Maverick Hotels and Restaurant Management. Habeeb complained in an October court filing in Illinois that Qualizza constantly sends “caustic and demeaning emails” and lobs “meritless accusations of inaction and misconduct.”

Qualizza claims Habeeb is “incompetent” and had a business relationship with Freeman that hadn’t been disclosed prior to the court appointing the company. He says he only spoke to Habeeb once.

“They want to keep me from accomplishing anything,” Qualizza said. “They don’t want to see the sale happen on my terms.”

The fate of the hotel, located next to a top tourist attraction, is unknown. But a court filing last month indicates a buyer — O’Reilly Hospitality Management of Springfield, Missouri — could be interested.

Post-Dispatch photographers capture hundreds of images each week; here's a glimpse at the week of March 9, 2025. Video edited by Jenna Jones.

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