SUSANVILLE - A 6,700- acre mountainside planned for a four-season resort in Lassen County has a new owner.
A limited liability company seized control of the property from Dyer Mountain Associates, a development group planning to build a golf, ski and secondhome resort for up to 500,000 visitors a year.
The deed recorded Friday in Lassen County names Dyer Holding LLC as titleholder to the land that rises from Mountain Meadows Reservoir to the top of Dyer Mountain near Westwood.
The $100,000 payment by Dyer LLC provides a line of credit for clearing a $6.1 million loan, one of four deeds of trust held by California Mortgage and Realty Inc., said Doug Lutz, lending director for the San Francisco based finance company.
The recent foreclosure sale on the steps of the Lassen County Courthouse follows months of negotiations between the developers, the lending company and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, where Dyer Mountain Associates filed for protection in March under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy code.
When the developers failed to come up with $51 million owed on three loans by an Aug. 29 deadline, Judge Dennis Montali allowed the foreclosure process to proceed.
The sale is the latest setback for the controversial project first proposed in 1999. The largest development proposal in the entire Sierra Nevada, the Dyer resort won its first endorsement in a 2000 ballot measure overwhelmingly approved by voters countywide.
Lassen County supervisors approved an environmental study and contractual agreement with the developers in September 2007.
Three conservation groups sued to overturn the supervisors' approval. Stalled since March by the bankruptcy filing, the foreclosure sale allows the lawsuit to proceed, said Steve Robinson, director of Westwood-based Mountain Meadows Conservancy, one of the plaintiffs.
Financial difficulties have been a constant concern for the developers, including a 2004 dispute over their failure to pay a one-time county tax levy of $157,000. They currently owe Lassen County $219,665 in property taxes, said tax collector Richard Egan.
They postponed promises to start construction from 2001 to the next year and the next.
What the new owner will do with the property remains unknown.
Lutz declined to provide any specifics.
Managers of Dyer Mountain Associates, the former owners, would like to see the original plan proceed with more than 4,000 residential units, 600,000 square feet of commercial space,two golf courses and a 600-acre ski area.
Local environmental groups view the new ownership as an opportunity for conservation.
The land "needs to stay in timber production," said Robinson, the local conservancy director. It is also is culturally significant to members of the Mountain Maidu tribe, he said.
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