The winning bid still has to be approved by the US Bankruptcy Court in Savannah on Dec. 12. Besides the acreage, the sale also included 2,700 acres of nearby timberland held by the bankruptcy estate of the paper company.

LandMar regional manager Jim Cullis says his 18-year-old company plans to develop a multimillion-dollar waterfront marina on the paper mill site which is about 240 miles southeast of Downtown Atlanta. "The project represents a natural continuation of our efforts in Georgia," Cullis says in a prepared statement.

LandMar's Dec. 6 bid eclipsed a Sept. 19 offer from South Carolina-based St. Marys Redevelopment Group LLC which proposed to pay $15 million in cash at closing, plus 18.5% of all future gross revenue from future development sales and from the sale of equipment at the closed mill, as GlobeSt.com previously reported. St. Marys Redevelopment had planned a mixed-use project comprising 1,100 residential units, a hotel, several restaurants and a marina.

Anthony Schnelling of New York-based Bridge Associates LLC, the court-appointed trustee for the Durango bankruptcy estate; Ward Stone Jr. of Stone & Baxter LLP in Macon; and Mitch Kahn, Al Liebermann and Natalie Wilensky of Hilco Real Estate LLC of Northbrook, IL coordinated the bidding competition.

"[The] auction shows what can be accomplished when you are willing to think out of the box and to seek a creative solution to a problem," Schnelling says in a prepared statement. "The Durango Georgia Paper Mill was clearly a distressed property, with limited value as a moth-balled paper plant. We saw what we believed to be its true potential, and today's auction validates that faith."

Schnelling adds, "We believe this is a process that can be replicated in similar situations around the country where there are distressed properties than can be transformed into higher and better uses."

An involuntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition was filed against Durango Georgia Paper Co. on Oct. 29, 2002, as GlobeSt.com reported. The Durango Estate converted the case to a voluntary Chapter 11 reorganization in November 2002.

When the the bidding competition intensified in the past several months, the event was moved to the Westin Savannah Harbor Hotel in Savannah in mid-October from the Amelia Island Plantation resort in Amelia Island, FL.