Watergate Up for Auction

Anyone want a 12-story, 251-room landmark hotel overlooking the Potomac? Tuesday morning the Watergate, where President Nixon's burglars famously broke into Democratic Party offices, leading to his resignation, will go under the gavel. The Independent reports that the once magisterial complex includes three apartment buildings, two office blocks and a shopping center. The complex has been closed since 2007 and "its lobby is strewn with abandoned furniture, awaiting a $170m renovation that never happened." Monument Realty, which bought the hotel for $45 million in 2004, wanted to convert it into luxury apartments, but locals opposed the move and then Monument's financing partner, Lehman Brothers, collapsed last fall. Now the hotel is in foreclosure and owes hundreds of thousands of dollars to the city in back property taxes.