Pool at Hotel Don Fernando in Taos

In October 2016, the Town of Taos received $500,000 in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds to work with a local developer to renovate the Hotel Don Fernando, whose former owners had lost the business through foreclosure. The mid-town hotel had become a hub of illegal activity and vandalism: too expensive for the developer to singlehandedly bring up to code but too visible a blight on the town’s main thoroughfare for town officials to ignore and a waste of potential gross receipts revenue for the tourism-dependent town.

The Town of Taos became fiscal agent for the U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funds, and the developer matched that money, reopening the 30-year-old, 126-room hotel two years later under the Hilton Tapestry banner. The federal funds helped the new owner address more than 100 code violations and purchase hotel furnishings. Continue reading →