Developer wants to tear down 3 Boise hotels. A fight involving Hindu icons threatens that
A proposal championed by former Mayor David Bieter to build an apartment complex, hotel and two-story Hindu temple on the site of three aging hotels near the Boise Airport faces an uncertain future as the property owners fight lawsuits.
The lawsuits include a fight over ownership of the 9-acre site just north of Interstate 84, alleged fraud and forgery, and the alleged theft of religious Hindu idols for personal benefit.
The site is home to three aging hotels: the Ramada by Wyndham Boise at 3300 S. Vista Ave., America Best Value Inn at 2525 Sunrise Rim Road, and Lotus by Hotel Inn at 3302 S. Vista Ave. A small Hindu temple already operates inside a ballroom of one of the hotels.
Gardner Co., a Salt Lake City developer that now employs Bieter in its Boise office, received a green light from the Boise Planning and Zoning Commission in August to demolish the hotels and build 183 apartments, a 240-room hotel and a 12,000-square-foot temple. But two lawsuits in Boise are complicating those plans.
1st lawsuit: Who really owns 3 Boise hotels?
The first legal challenge comes from Hitesh Chokshi, a Las Vegas businessman who runs hotels in multiple Western states.
In May, Chokshi sued the company that owns the properties, Boise Management Inc., along with a property manager, Jayant Patil, and a local owner, Rakesh Kothari, alleging a laundry list of offenses. These include breach of contract, unjust enrichment, forgery and wrongful conversion of property.
The lawsuit alleges that Chokshi had a majority stake in two businesses in Idaho and Utah with Los Angeles businessman Dhananjay Rawal. The lawsuit claims that one of those businesses, TM Hospitality LLC, owned the three hotel properties.
Chokshi was an 82% owner of the business and Rawal was 18% owner until 2018, when Kothari bought Rawal’s stake, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges that Patil, who was a property manager at the hotels, illegally transferred the properties with Kothari in 2020 to another business, Boise Management Inc., that was created by them and an individual named Pinal Doshi.
In a sworn deposition out of court, Patil testified that he could not remember who made him a manager, or who or why he was asked to transfer the properties.
“There was never any company agreement or corporate resolution to transfer the hotel properties,” the lawsuit claims.
Steven Wieland, a Boise lawyer representing Patil and Kothari, told the Idaho Statesman a different story.
Wieland said by email that TM Hospitality was owned 50/50 by Kothari and an individual named Nidhi Vagashia. The original owner of the business, an individual named Tushar Patel, was concerned about the properties going into default during the COVID-19 pandemic and had Kothari sell the properties to Doshi in 2020 for $6.5 million.
Patil created Boise Management Inc. so Doshi could take the title for the properties, Wieland said.
Steve Taggart, an Idaho Falls lawyer representing Chokshi, said that the case comes down to a question about Chokshi’s ownership size.
“This case is fundamentally about those hotels and who has interest in them, and our client, we believe, is a significant, if not the most significant owner in them,” Taggart said by phone. “Anything that has diminished that has been done wrongfully.”
The lawsuit also alleges that Kothari and Patil fraudulently used Chokshi’s name and Social Security number to open bank and credit card accounts and apply for small-business loans, including COVID-19 loans authorized by Congress to keep businesses afloat and employees earning money as the pandemic harmed businesses in 2020.
Kothari and Patil allegedly applied for and received nearly $281,000 in Paycheck Protection Program loans without Chokshi’s knowledge. The program awarded businesses up to eight weeks of payroll costs. The loans were designed to be forgiven if certain payroll criteria were met, and most loans were.
“Hitesh did not know where the funds were deposited nor where the funds were being used,” the lawsuit alleges. “Hitesh did not create any accounts with the banks that the funds were deposited into.”
The lawsuit also alleges that Patil and/or Kothari forged Chokshi’s name to take out $300,000 in Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program loans and liabilities under his name without his approval. Those loans were not forgiveable.
Patil and Kothari used their own phone numbers and emails while using Chokshi’s name and Social Security number for applications, the lawsuit alleges.
Patil acknowledged that they applied for the loans but said Chokshi knew about them and was included in all communications about them.
According to the lawsuit, Patil and/or Kothari entered into a franchise agreement for the three hotels with Choice Hotels International by forging Chokshi’s name. It alleges that Patil and Kothari defaulted on paying franchise fees, which caused Choice Hotels International to initiate arbitration against Chokshi.
“Defendants are believed to be embezzling funds and scheming cash out of the hotel,” the lawsuit states.
According to Chokshi’s lawsuit, the hotel properties are also “being grossly mismanaged as demonstrated by the sheer volume of police incident reports in a relatively short period of time.”
Data obtained by the Statesman from the Boise Police Department through a public records request showed police were called to the three properties 1,996 times between January 2020 and Oct. 7, 2023. The tally includes 219 calls for welfare checks, 114 calls for suspicious subjects or vehicles, 57 calls for suicidal subjects or attempts, 54 calls for trespassing, 53 calls for fights, 46 calls for narcotics, 12 calls for fraud and nine calls for rape..
“Nobody thinks these are the nicest hotels in town,” Wieland said. “They are all at the end of their productive life.”
Wieland said that to keep the hotels profitable, they need to be rented out at a low price, which tends to attract more-difficult customers.
“What on Earth could my clients have done differently?” Wieland said. “We don’t know, and we sharply dispute any implication that the hotels are being mismanaged. These issues have been ongoing for years, and the only way to truly resolve them is to tear down the existing hotels, which is exactly what we’re trying to do.”
2nd lawsuit: Who really owns the Hindu idols?
In the second lawsuit, Kothari sued four people for defamation in June 2022 after they posted in a Facebook group called Boise Desi Group that Kothari was refusing to return religious idols owned by the Hindu Educational Society of Idaho, or HESI. Desi refers to people of Indian-subcontinent birth or descent who live abroad.
HESI fired back, denying the claims and countersuing Kothari and his spouse, Patil and 15 Idaho organizations registered under the two of them. HESI alleges they took Hindu religious idols belonging to them and are using the idols for their benefit.
Boise resident Baranikumar Sivakumar co-founded HESI in July 2020 to hold religious and social gatherings for Hindus in the Boise area, according to the counterclaim.
In June 2021, Sivakumar and his spouse, Pallavi Kudva, met Kothari and his spouse at a community social gathering, according to the counterclaim. They talked about an accident that had damaged a building HESI was renting for religious and cultural services on West Overland Road in Boise. In April, a car had veered off the road and crashed through a wall where they housed the idols.
HESI had close to 10 idols, some weighing hundreds of pounds, representing a number of Hindu deities.
Kothari offered to host HESI and their idols at the Ramada by Wyndham Boise at 3300 S. Vista Ave — the same property Chokshi claims Kothari and Patil transferred to themselves.
“This offer was welcomed by HESI; the organization had recently purchased and imported several new sacred idols from overseas and was eager to consecrate them but had been unable to do so given the damage to the building HESI was previously renting,” the countersuit alleges.
HESI agreed to rent the ballroom that Kothari offered, the lawsuit says, but Kothari and Patil refused to formalize the agreement with a rental contract. With verbal and text message assurances from Kothari, the organization moved the idols into the ballroom within days with help from members of the community.
Patil registered a new religious nonprofit, Boise Hindu Temple Inc., 10 days later at the same address, according to filings with the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office. The IRS declared Boise Hindu Temple Inc. a tax-exempt organization in February 2022, according to an IRS determination letter.
That organization was inactive as of Sept. 16, 2023, according to the Idaho secretary of state’s website.
The new business added its own idols to the collection in the ballroom and, for a time, the two organizations coexisted peacefully in the shared space, the countersuit says.
On Sept. 4, 2021, Patil sent an email “demanding” that HESI cease all events indefinitely, stop accepting donations, stop sending messages to the community and stop using the Ramada as its registered address, according to the counterclaim. According to Wieland, this was due to a dispute about how HESI was using the space.
HESI attempted to finalize terms and resume operations in the ballroom but Boise Hindu Temple Inc., or BHT, refused to reach any final resolutions, the counterclaim alleges. Nine months later, HESI tried to remove its own idols and vacate the space, after getting approval from BHT, and was then refused.
“Persons representing BHT and the Ramada refused to permit HESI access to the Ramada ballroom; instead, those persons threatened to involve law enforcement and initiate litigation against HESI,” the suit alleges.
The lawsuit alleges that when law enforcement arrived at the scene that day, Patil told them HESI had donated the idols to BHT. But no party “including and especially BHT, produced a donation slip or other written or otherwise recorded agreement to support that false claim, as none exists.”
The HESI Facebook post followed, and Kothari filed the defamation case against HESI.
HESI left the property without the idols and claims BHT is still using them for its benefit. HESI has not held any services or events since Patil asked the group to vacate in September 2021.
Patil told the Statesman that the idols were communal property owned by the local Hindu community and were never owned by HESI. He would not show the Statesman proof of ownership or a donation slip, saying he would do so when asked by the court.
“These idols were only ever owned by nonprofit organizations, which by definition are not owned by anyone,” Wieland said. “No single person ever owned the property to begin with.”
Third lawsuit: Allegations made, case dismissed
Kothari was named in a third legal battle in Los Angeles that accused him of playing a role in an organized racketeering and money-laundering scheme that siphoned money from a number of hotels to buy property in Idaho and Arkansas. One of the properties included was the 3300 S. Vista Ave. property in Boise.
That federal case was paused, then dismissed as the plaintiffs pursued a related case, according to legal documents.
What comes next
As these cases worm their way through the court system, Patil has continued to work as property manager for the hotels, while Kothari has been away in India on family matters.
Boise Hindu Temple continues to hold daily services at the Ramada by Wyndham Boise and is holding events including a Navratri festival held in honor of the goddess Durga’s victory over an evil demon.
David Bieter, the ex-mayor working for Gardner, said he believes there’s not much merit to the lawsuits. He thinks many of the allegations will be dismissed.
And that approval of the new development by the Boise Planning and Zoning Commission? Some nearby residents appealed it, saying the commission had not taken traffic, pedestrian and bicyclist safety into consideration. That appeal was denied by Boise City Council Oct. 10.
Bieter told the Idaho Statesman that he is still hoping “very much” to build the development.
“It’s a great project,” Bieter said, “and we expect to begin it as soon as possible.”
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