Spicer Mansion goes for less than $3.1 million in second auction
Oct. 22—MYSTIC — A Guilford-based entity holding mortgages on Spicer Mansion signed a contract Saturday to buy the hotel for $3,050,000 after submitting the winning bid in a public foreclosure sale.
MMP Holdings LLC outbid Walter "Sonny" Glaser Jr., the Steamboat Inn owner, and Tim Owens, an Avon chiropractor who owns property in Stonington and Watch Hill.
About two dozen people watched as attorney Aimee Siefert conducted the bidding across the street from Spicer Mansion.
Both Glaser and Owens also had placed bids during a March auction of the boutique hotel, whose current owner, Gates Realty Holdings, continues to operate it. The winning bidder in the earlier auction, Ross Weingarten, a business partner of Gates Realty principal Brian Gates, failed to close on the purchase, leading to Saturday's do-over.
Weingarten's winning bid was $3.52 million. The three-story, eight-room hotel, which Gates Realty opened in 2016 after investing millions in renovations, had an appraised value of $3.67 million.
On Saturday, Owens started the bidding with an offer of $2,060,000. Glaser then bid $2.1 million before Joshua Cohen, an attorney representing MMP Holdings, offered $3,050,000.
Cohen declined to identify the individual or individuals behind MMP Holdings and said it was "too early to say" what his client planned to do with the property.
According to state records, the agent for MMP Holdings is Madeleine Perricone.
Cohen said MMP Holdings holds second and third mortgages on Spicer Mansion. Chelsea Groton Bank, which holds the first mortgage, filed suit against Gates Realty in 2019, alleging it owed the bank about $1.8 million.
At the time, foreclosure sales of Spicer Mansion and four other Gates-owned properties loomed.
Later, however, scheduled sales of the four other properties, including Gates' residence in Stonington, were canceled after Gates filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from creditors.
Chelsea Groton successfully argued in bankruptcy court that the second attempt to auction Spicer Mansion should go forward.
Worth Avenue Capital, which is providing financing for MMP Holdings' purchase of Spicer Mansion, was represented at Saturday's auction by its principal, Michael Ciaburri, who also declined to comment on the property's future. Ciaburri was the president, chief executive officer and co-founder of The Bank of Southern Connecticut in New Haven, which was merged into Middletown-based Liberty Bank in 2013.
MMP Holdings and Worth Avenue Capital have the same Guilford address: 171 Old Sachems Head Road.
Weingarten, the winning bidder in the first Spicer Mansion auction, is seeking to recover the $367,000 deposit he forfeited when he failed to come up with the balance of his $3.52 million offer. He is pursuing the matter in state Appellate Court.
"The appellant (Weingarten) bid on the property at the request of Brian Gates convinced by Brian Gates that a third party would buy the Spicer Mansion," Weingarten's attorney, Frank Liberty, wrote last week in a filing in the case.
Only when the third party had backed out did Weingarten seek legal representation, on Gates' advice, by which time the deadline to close on the purchase had expired, Liberty wrote.
Chelsea Groton argues that Weingarten lacks standing in the matter and that the court should dismiss his appeal.
Once a judge approves Saturday's foreclosure sale, MMP Holdings will have no fewer than 20 days and no more than 30 days to close on its purchase of Spicer Mansion.
