Appletree Golf Course goes for $1.45M in foreclosure sale
Talk about a deal.
In what could be one of the biggest bargains so far in the depressed Colorado Springs real estate market, a limited liability company picked up the 156-acre Appletree Golf Course and an additional 220 acres in Fountain in a foreclosure sale Wednesday for just $1.45 million. That represents 8.6 percent of what Morley Golf LLC owed on the defaulted loan owned by the limited liability company, which was set up by a unit of Miami-based home building giant Lennar Corp.
If no other creditors try to redeem the foreclosed property by paying off the $16.9 million Morley Golf owes, Multibank 2009 RES-ADC Venture LLC will get a deed to the property on Feb. 14. The property also still may be subject to mechanic’s liens filed by nearly a dozen contractors, consultants and suppliers who say they weren’t paid for work on Morley Golf’s project to upgrade the course, which has been closed since 2006.
Multibank acquired the $18.2 million loan on the golf course and property last year from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Morley Golf borrowed the money in 2007 from Columbian Bank and Trust Co., a Topeka, Kan., bank that failed in 2008 and was taken over by the FDIC, to upgrade the course and develop the other property.
Jim Morley, owner of Morley Golf and a related limited liability company, said Multibank may not be getting much of a deal on the property, which he described as “a 13½-hole golf course filled with weeds, half a club house and a few lots. There’s not much there.”
Morley said he tried to make a deal to keep the property with a Lennar subsidiary that controls Multibank, but never could complete it.
“The sad thing is we were playing golf on this course in 2008 and were a half-step away from a beautiful golf course and clubhouse. Then the bank failed,” he said.
Morley filed a lawsuit last fall in U.S. District Court in Denver against the FDIC, alleging the federal agency failed to allow loan proceeds to be used to fund improvements at Appletree. The lawsuit was dismissed.
Once one of the largest developers in the Colorado Springs area, Morley Companies now has laid off all of its employees and either lost in foreclosure, is in foreclosure or has deeded to lenders in lieu of foreclosure nearly all of the property it once controlled, Jim Morley said.
When Morley Golf bought the property, tens of thousands of homes, townhomes, apartments and condos in Fountain were under construction or on the drawing board.
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