The Truman Hotel & Conference Center in Jefferson City has closed for good.
Vivek Puri, who with his father, Dr. Ravi Puri, owns the property as the Puri Group of Enterprises along with parent company Oracle Enterprises, said they officially shut down the hotel at 1510 Jefferson Street on Monday.
"We're very sorry that we had to shut down this landmark, but we were left with no alternative," Puri said. "We just gave it our best shot for the last two years, and unfortunately it was not good enough."
The Puri Group has no plans to reopen the existing facility, he said, but does plan to retain ownership of the property.
The Puri Group purchased the Truman Hotel & Conference Center in July 2013 from St. Louis attorneys Christian Peper Jr. and Rex Bertram. The father-son pair also owns several other hotels in Mid-Missouri, including the DoubleTree at 422 Monroe St., which they bought in September 2005 as a Quality Inn and renovated.
The plan had been similar for the 233-room Truman Hotel and its 24,000 square feet of combined meeting space: to renovate and restore the historic structure, Dr. Puri told the News Tribune in a previous interview after purchasing the Truman.
"The product was outdated. It was not a contemporary design," Vivek Puri said Thursday. "It had its issues. We did the best we could to spruce things up."
Both the hotel and conference center operations have ceased. Puri noted the conference center fulfilled the terms of all contracts it had. "We kept it open even though it was not prudent in order to fulfill the contract obligations," he said.
All Truman Hotel employees who wanted to retain a position with the company were absorbed at other Jefferson City hotels owned by the Puri Group earning at least what they were paid previously, Puri said.
The hotel property was appraised at $1.75 million in 2015.
The hotel originally opened as a Ramada Inn in 1964, according to Cole County Assessor's Office records. After 42 years under that name, the hotel ownership severed ties with the national chain and renamed the independent hotel after Missouri native and former President Harry S Truman.
The property's Jefferson City history includes Bingham's restaurant, which at one time invited guests to the private "Churchill Room" that was ventilated for cigar smokers, as well as hotel bar The Library Lounge, where local pianist Mike Michelson entertained for nearly 40 years through 2012.
The Puri Group presented plans to the Jefferson City Council in October 2013 to transform the Truman Hotel into a conference center, when the city was offering a $9 million contribution from lodging tax collections to help fund the development of a conference center.
The Puris' proposed conference center would have included more than 200 rooms, 40,000 square feet of flexible meeting space and no ongoing subsidy from the city. However, the Puri Group announced its proposal after the City Council was already in contract negotiations with two other potential conference center developers, Farmer Development and the Ehrhardt Hospitality Group.
Ultimately, the council opted to reject both of the original conference center proposals and has not formally discussed the issue since.
When asked whether the Puri Group would consider building a new, modern facility on the property, Puri said, "We always keep our options open."
News Tribune city editor Gerry Tritz and reporter Madeleine Leroux contributed to this article.