Eaton Ferry sale not settled yet

For the second time over the past month, Morningstar Group Inc., a property and real estate management firm in Matthews, has supplanted a bid by a local business man for the Eaton Ferry Marina.

Samuel T. Oliver Jr., a Raleigh attorney representing Morningstar, placed a bid on behalf of his client of $3,263,400 with the Warren County Superior Court Clerk’s office Monday, the deadline for an upset bid.

The offer is 5 percent higher than the bid placed by Richard Courser, owner of Stonehouse Timber Lodge in Littleton, and was another offer in a continual auction that has been going since Courser placed a high bid of $2.7 million during a foreclosure sale on the courthouse steps in Warrenton.

Tuesday, Courser said he wasn’t sure what his next step would be.  He has ten days to place an upset bid, which must be at least 5 percent higher than the one placed by Morningstar.

“I’m not sure what I’m going to do at this point,” Courser said. “With the bid going up again, I’m going to have to sleep on it, take a few days to decide what I’ll do.”

The process of bidding on the marina began Sept. 5, during a bankruptcy court-ordered auction began in Warrenton.

After a competitive bidding exchange that began with a $500,000 offer, and included two bids by BB&T, Courser eventually walked away with the highest bid on the table at $2.7 million.

Under U.S. Bankruptcy law, any bidder has ten days from that date to place what’s called an upset bid, but that bid must be at least 5 percent higher.

Morningstar, which did not place any bids during the Sept. 5 auction, and on Sept. 17, Morningstar placed an upset bid of $2.96 million. The firm had until Sept. 17 because Sept. 15, the tenth day, fell on a weekend.

With that action, a new ten-day period began, and courser upped the ante by placing his own upset bid on Sept. 27 of $3.108,000, thus beginning the clock on another ten-day period.

That expired Monday, and Morningstar placed its latest bid that day. Now, Courser has until Oct. 18 to make a decision.

The sale of Eaton Ferry Marina is part of the Chapter 11 Bankruptcy proceeding filed in court in January 2006 on behalf of Eaton Ferry Sales and Service, Duane White Land Co. and Ronald Duane White.

According to William White, no relation to Duane White, the land and buildings there had two liens place on them, one to BB&T for $465,000 and one for $1.4 million to Wachovia, at the time of the sale.