The newly formed hotel company - a spinoff of Covington developer Bill Butler's Corporex Cos. - has secured a $100 million line of credit from U.S. Bank that it will use to acquire hotels in California, Colorado, Chicago, Southeast Florida and New England. But the company will not rule out the possibility of snapping up more Cincinnati-area properties.

"Those are our initial target markets, but we're not limited to those markets," chief executive William Blackham said Tuesday. "We'll deal with opportunities on their own merit."

Eagle has raised more than $150 million from last Friday's initial public stock offering on the New York Stock Exchange The company has nearly 16.8 million shares outstanding. The stock opened last Friday at $9.75 per share and closed Tuesday at $10.36.

Butler, who founded Corporex in 1965, owns nearly 19 percent of Eagle, and he will serve as chairman of the start-up hotel company.

Butler, Blackham and Tom Banta will be among the Corporex veterans who will serve on Eagle's nine-member board.

Some of the cash raised by the stock offering will be used to acquire and pay debt of nine hotels - including the Marriott and Embassy Suites at the RiverCenter complex in Covington and the Hilton in Florence near Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport.

Butler is expected to be paid $30.9 million based on his ownership interest in those properties.

Eagle will acquire the hotels by paying Corporex and its affiliates $50 million plus a fixed amount based on the hotels' working capital at the time the deal closes. That working capital equaled $11.2 million as of June.

While Eagle will own the hotels, it will sign contracts with other companies to manage the properties.

Initially, eight of the nine properties will be managed by Butler's Commonwealth Hotels.

The company's nine hotels generated revenue of $74.7 million in 2003, according the company's Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

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