A Plainfield businessman signed a contract Saturday for the purchase of the Spicer Mansion, having bid $3.52 million for the boutique hotel during a public foreclosure sale.
Ross Weingarten, owner of Sawyer Sheds, declined to speak with a reporter following the auction, which took place during a chilly drizzle on the Elm Street sidewalk in front of the hotel. About 20 people, many of them interested locals, gathered under umbrellas for the noontime event.
Four bidders, including Chelsea Groton Bank, which had sued the hotel’s owner, Gates Realty Holdings, over an unpaid mortgage loan, took part in the bidding.
Chelsea Groton started the bidding with a $2,053,000 offer.
Walter “Sonny” Glaser Jr., owner of the Steamboat Inn and other Mystic properties, offered $2.1 million, which Mystic businessman Tim Owens, who owns the Pizzetta restaurant, upped to $2.2 million.
Glaser then went to $2.3 million before Weingarten’s bid ended the back and forth.
Aimee Siefert, the attorney appointed by New London Superior Court to conduct the auction, said she will move that the court approve the sale to Weingarten, who would have 30 days to complete the deal. Siefert could not say whether the sale price would be enough to satisfy all creditors with claims on the property, including holders of subordinate mortgages.
The bidders, other than Chelsea Groton, were required to submit certified checks for $367,000 prior to the bidding. In agreeing to the foreclosure sale, the bank and Gates Realty had agreed to a $3.67 million valuation of the hotel.
