Opinion: Watergate, the hotel, has a Bidgate after Foreclosuregate

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No Longer For Sale:Luxury Hotel site. Grt vus. Cent. location nation’s capital. Famous site of historic 1972 political crime that torpedoed a presidency and caused global media to add -gate to the end of any possible scandal for the next 37 years at least.

Monicagate. Irangate. Travelgate. Koreagate. Camillagate. Billygate. Scootergate. Blagogate. Bittergate. Rathergate. Macacagate. Tollgate (just kidding). Spygate. Gategate. You get the idea.

The Watergate. Yes there was a famous botched burglary there led by someone named Bernard Barker that eventually led, like some dark Robert Redford-Dustin Hoffman movie, all the way up to the White House and prompted some guy named Richard ‘I am not a crook’ Nixon to become the first president to resign. He’s dead now.

The innocent hotel is part of a large condo complex that’s a nice place to live, if you’ve got a bundle. Condoleezza Rice crashed there in between trips to global crises. Hillary Rodham Clinton dined there during a private tutor session with Rice before the inauguration.

But the hotel’s owner, Monument Realty, fell behind on payments for its $40-million loan, a kind of Loangate. The creditors -- PB Capital Corp. -- watched its foreclosure expire last Thursday. So today the historic complex went on the auction block, a kind of Auctiongate.

To demonstrate their seriousness for today’s auction, 10 potential bidders put down $1 million as deposit, Depositgate.

The bidding opened at $25 million today. And just as quickly the bidding closed. Not one bid.

Bidgate on Watergate.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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