Downtown Astoria’s historic Hotel Elliott changed hands Tuesday in a foreclosure sale for around $4.1 million.

The sale transfers ownership from No. 10 Sixth Street to a new company, Sanders Elliott LLC, owned by Molly Sanders of Vancouver, Wash.

No. 10 Sixth Street owner Chester Trabucco said his company invested between $3.5 million and $4 million into renovating the hotel, so the transaction turned out “pretty much break even.” The sale was arranged to repay Sanders the money she invested in No. 10 Sixth Street, he said.

Trabucco said despite the economic recession, which knocked the wind out of many of his real estate projects, the Elliott has remained successful with high occupancy.

The Astoria native, who now lives in Seattle, has been widely acclaimed for his dramatic redevelopment of the five-story building, which was a flophouse when he bought it a decade ago, and is now a 32-room luxury hotel.

The hotel will be in good hands with Sanders, Trabucco said.

North Pacific Management, Inc., of Vancouver, Wash., will continue managing the hotel as it has for the past year and a half, and John Taffin will stay on as the hotel’s general manager.

“Molly will represent a fresh pair of legs on the project,” said Trabucco. “She’s always loved the hotel. The transition will be seamless … the personnel are exactly the same as they were before.”

But he said he is sad to see it go. “I won’t sugar-coat the fact that I expected to die in the top floor suite at age 90,” Trabucco said, “but it obviously didn’t work out that way.”

The hotel still owes the city of Astoria tens of thousands of dollars in overdue lodging tax – a consequence of hard times for No. 10 Sixth Street.

That debt has been passed on to the new owner.

“I believe that will be taken care of,”?Trabucco said Tuesday.

No. 10 Sixth Street is now being run by creditor Eric Jacobsen of Lake Oswego through a court-ordered receivership.

Another one of the company’s properties, the Fisher Brothers condominium building on Seventh Street in Astoria, was reclaimed by the Bank of the Pacific to cover $1.2 million in unpaid loans earlier this year.

Trabucco said he took on some risk in trying to make the Elliott and his other real estate projects successful. He and many others like him have gotten burned by the real estate market collapse and tandem credit crunch.

“I?have zero regrets,” Trabucco said. “Not only did I put my heart and soul and money into this project, but so did a lot of people in the town. Everyone has been very supportive of the Elliott. … Everybody’s worked to make this a very special place in town, and I think it will continue to be so for years to come. I’ll always be proud of that.”