I wrote in December that the Renaissance Hotel’s bondholders held the keys to the hotel’s future. After today’s foreclosure sale, they quite literally hold the keys to the property.

Bond trustee UMB Bank has used modern technology, like conference calls and the Web, to communicate with bondholders throughout the hotel’s years of financial struggles. But at the end, the property’s fate was decided at an auction proceeding that seemed almost Dickensian. Brian Krippner of UMB read the property’s lengthy legal description, right down to the shrubs and the laundry carts, with a lawyer standing by to make sure he was reading it correctly. (He only stumbled twice.) About 25 people, including a representative of Marriott, looked on, and an occasional passerby traipsed through the crowd in order to enter the Civil Courts building.

After the 25-minute-long legal recitation, Krippner opened the auction. The bondholders would accept bids for some or all of the assets, he said. But no one wanted so much as a laundry cart, so after a few seconds, another UMB representative entered a $98 million bid on behalf of the bondholders. “Going once, going twice, going three times … sold,” Krippner announced, and the bondholders had themselves a hotel. $98 million is equal to the face value of the bonds.

Afterward, one onlooker said something like, “Well, they went over my limit — I could only go up to $80 million.” I’m pretty sure he was joking, because some the bonds traded in December for 25 cents on the dollar. If somebody had really brought a check for $80 million — or 82 percent of face value — the bondholders probably would have been elated.