Creditors are planning to sell at auction the 204-acre Fox Ridge Farm, owned by entrepreneur Halsey Minor, to settle a $6.52 million mortgage on which Minor has defaulted.
Auctioneers will sell the Free Union-area property on the Albemarle County Courthouse steps at 3 p.m. Feb. 18, according to legal advertisements placed by the trustees, Blankingship and Keith, of Fairfax.
First Republic Bank of San Francisco holds the mortgage. In January, the loan had a buyout cost of $6.76 million, according to trustees.
Minor could not be reached for comment.
Minor was a co-founder of CNET, a Web site that reviews technology from software to computers. The University of Virginia graduate has since entered into a variety of economic ventures, including the Landmark Hotel, a planned 100-room, high-end boutique hotel on the Downtown Mall. He was developing the hotel with Lee Danielson, who led the Charlottesville Ice Park and Regal Cinema projects.
Work stopped on the hotel early last year amid accusations of contract breaches and lawsuits between Minor and Danielson.
The Fox Ridge Farm foreclosure is the second for the farm in two months. A second mortgage on the property to secure a $1.01 million loan for Minor was bought back by Minor’s Fox Ridge Farm Holding Co. at a Jan. 4 courthouse auction for $1.39 million. That loan had a to-date buyout of $1.47 million, trustees said.
The second mortgage was the result of an April 2009 loan made to Minor by a limited liability company of which local banker and investor Mark Giles is a principal, according to Albemarle County court records. Giles is the chairman and former chief executive officer of Virginia National Bank.
Fox Ridge Farm has a conservation easement on it that limits its uses for commercial and residential development.
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