It’s been a long time coming, Selma. The Saint James Hotel is finally in the hands of someone who has the best chance of making it what we’ve all been dreaming it could be – a first class destination hotel owned by people who know how to run it.

According to the warranty deed, the city is receiving $400,000 from St. James Hotel, LLC, a newly formed corporation that has purchased the hotel, along with the Phoenix Park property on Water Avenue. Rhaglan Hospitality will operate the hotel after it completes an extensive multi-million dollar renovation, which they hope to complete by year’s end.

Rhaglan’s projects include the Redmont Hotel in Birmingham, which reopened in March 2016 and is part of the Curio Collection by Hilton, which is what the St. James will be once redeveloped. Rhaglan’s website boasts more than $150 million in completed commercial buildings including “numerous core branded hotels totaling over 700 rooms” that generate $120 million in annual revenue.

Rhaglan obviously knows its stuff, but it’s been a long, strange, and often frustratingly comical road to get us to this point. You could almost hear the audible gasp of relief from Selma citizens when the deal was finally, and thankfully, closed signaling the end of city ownership.

To be fair, the city should have never been in the hotel business to begin with. They have more pressing matters to deal with, like making sure the bills get paid, crime is curtailed, the streets get paved, and figuring out how to somehow clean up after those who make a mess in the city. I don’t envy them. It’s no doubt a tough, and often thankless job.

The Saint James has a long and interesting history, but its more recent past is one highlighted by mismanagement from leaseholders such as Gourmet Services and more recently, Strand Management.

Gourmet Services was awarded the contract to run the hotel in 2007. I attended a community meeting where representatives spoke about their plans to renovate and run the hotel. They were impressive, and exciting. Some good work was done under their management, but they’d never operated a hotel before, thus failed horribly.

Strand Management was next, and their failure was even more spectacular. When they finally slinked out of town in 2015 they left the city holding the bag for nearly $90,000 in unpaid invoices, including $12,000 owed to a company that provided linens to the hotel, which had somehow gone missing.

After the Strand debacle, the city attempted to keep the hotel open and run it with volunteers. I give props to Councilwomen Keith and Benjamin, and the many big-hearted and hardworking people they enlisted for trying to make it work. It eventually proved to be an impossible task given the complexity of what was needed to make it work, and the hotel was closed and boarded up, thus ending the massive cash drain on the city.

Finally, and thankfully, the decision was made to sell the hotel, but the drama didn’t end there. The city council came within a whisper of selling the St. James to a convicted felon for $100,000. Through the reporting of this newspaper, the man’s criminal history and business failures was made public, leading to the council reversing course.

We took some heat for our reporting. Some said it was political in nature, or that we were being unfair in reporting the man’s criminal history, which is public record by the way. The citizens of Selma, who owned the hotel, had a right to know the facts, we delivered them, and based on the news this week, things seem to have worked out for the best.

Mayor Darrio Melton, the city council, and Gamble, Gamble, Calame and Jones, LLC, the law firm who guided the city on this project, are to be congratulated on finally hitting what seems to be a homerun. I know they are thrilled to see an agreement in place with a reputable, experienced owner that has a history of success in managing historic hotels.

So now our community is filled with a sense of optimism and hope that the grim chapters of the St. James are now complete and a new chapter of success and pride for our downtown hotel has begun. Given Rhaglan’s experience, I’m betting they will make the St. James a showplace once again, which is what we all want and need.