Bank will end up with deed in Academy building foreclosure

Property will be back on the market

The former home of the Crested Butte Academy should be finished with the foreclosure process in a couple of weeks and will likely end up in the hands of the bank overseeing the note by the middle of August. In fact, the bank, Wells Fargo, is forming a limited liability company, Crested Butte School LLC, to market and sell the property.

The Gunnison County treasurer’s office had the building on the auction block and up for bid Wednesday, July 23, but no one showed up to try to buy the property. The building is located at 505 Whiterock Avenue in Crested Butte and includes 10 lots.
The bank had the only bid for the amount owed, $3,145,239.15. According to Teresa Brown, deputy public trustee with the Gunnison County treasurer’s office, a deed will likely be issued to the bank on August 14. “Unless a junior liener comes in and pays off the entire lien, it will go back to the bank and they will own the property. That is the most likely scenario,” said Brown.
Brown explained that the building went through the treasurer’s office because that office is the public trustee. “We are just the go-betweens between the bank and anyone else that would have bid on the property,” she explained.
Wells Fargo spokesperson Jason Menke, said the goal of the bank is to “market the property and sell it as quickly as possible.” Menke did not know how much the bank would be asking for the property or when it would hit the market. Menke explained that the bank was forming the Crested Butte School LLC with the express intent of getting the property sold quickly. Menke said the bank took the property since no other bids came in, and as a trustee for the bondholders, was obligated to make a bid for what was owned.
The Whiterock Avenue property has been a hotel, bar, restaurant and, most recently, the Crested Butte Academy, a college prep school that also offered alpine skiing, freestyle skiing and snowboarding. The school had moved from the Crested Butte property to Mt. Crested Butte in 2007 but the Academy has since closed its doors after suffering severe financial problems. The property has remained vacant since then.
Several people had considered purchasing the property, which had been on the market for $5.4 million, but no deal was ever reached. The property will officially be deeded to Wells Fargo in about two weeks.