Administrators put Signature Living’s Shankly hotel on the market

Administrators of Signature Living’s Shankly hotel in Liverpool have put the freehold of the property up for sale for an undisclosed sum.

The 125-bedroom, seven-storey hotel was featured in the BBC One docu-series The Grand Party Hotel last year. The hotel has reopened this week despite the administration as it is still operated by Signature Living.

The hotel opened in phases between 2015 and 2019 and is football-themed in tribute to its namesake, former Liverpool FC manager Bill Shankly. It was co-owned by Signature Living founders Lawrence and Katie Kenwright and Christopher William Shankly Carline, Bill Shankly’s grandson.

The property includes 57 hotel bedrooms and 68 apartment-style bedrooms with kitchen facilities, sleeping approximately 662 guests in total. It also houses the Bastion bar and restaurant, a rooftop bar, and two meeting, function and events spaces that can accommodate up to 500 seated delegates or over 1,000 standing guests.

CBRE is handling the sale on behalf of joint administrators Matthew Ingram and Michael Lennon of Kroll, formerly Duff & Phelps, who were appointed on 9 April 2020.

Lennon said: “The Signature Shankly hotel is a quality venue in an excellent location. Pre-pandemic, it would see around 700 people check-in on a Friday night for a weekend experience and its unique offering to larger groups makes it a popular selection. During the last 12 months, trading under the various pandemic restrictions has been strong, with a high number of bookings and demand for tickets to events the hotel has been able to host, in excess of the numbers allowed under the Covid reduced capacity. Everyone is confident that the hotel will return to pre-Covid levels of trade once the restrictions are lifted.”

Shaun Skidmore, senior director for operational real estate at CBRE Manchester, said the hotel “represents an excellent opportunity for a keen investor to acquire a consistently high-performing hotel with a national profile and a range of additional revenue streams and further development potential”.

In May 2019, Signature Living announced plans to sell the hotel for £40m to fund further expansion, and in November that year said it intended to sell or refinance many of its properties following reports of investors’ concerns over repayments, but a deal didn’t materialise for the Shankly.

Signature Shankly, the property subsidiary of the hotel, fell into administration in 2020 and administrators said part of their role would be to investigate how investors’ money was spent by the company.

According to administration documents filed with Companies House, the company went into administration owing bedroom investors arrears of around £1.3m, and that if the group had successfully sold its 30 James Street and Shankly hotels for a total of £57m as it had hoped, it would have been able to meet its liabilities.

Although other Signature Living hotels and trading companies were not affected by the administration, the group’s Coal Exchange hotel in Cardiff also separately fell into administration, as did its George Best hotel in Belfast.

Signature Living is no longer involved in the Exchange hotel after investors took over the property, or the 30 James Street hotel in Liverpool, which has reopened under Legacy Hotels’ management.

Kenwright recently announced he would be lodging a CVA recovery plan with administrators "within weeks" to regain control of the property side of the business. The bar and restaurant at a second Shankly hotel in Preston, currently under development, are expected to open in August.