LandMar beat out a dozen buyers for the riverfront property, about 240 miles southeast of Downtown Atlanta, as GlobeSt.com reported Dec. 9. The developer plans a multimillion-dollar, mixed-use marina-oriented project on the site.

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.

"This is not just a real estate transaction," Schnelling says in a prepared statement. "The real story here is how a distressed piece of property, with very limited perceived value, ultimately became the subject of a vigorous bidding process which resulted in a significant recovery to the estate and its creditors."

Stone, a lawyer, adds, "When we started this process, the value of the offers that we received for the bankruptcy estate was virtually zero. To be able to provide in excess of $42 million to the estate is simply a phenomenal outcome that would not have happened if the property were marketed as a paper mill." He says "the proof is that we received no bid from a mill re-starter."

Other consultants who worked on marketing the property were Michael Newsom of Bridge Associates and Scott Peterman of Hilco Real Estate. An involuntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition was filed by Durango Georgia Paper Co. on Oct. 29, 2002, as GlobeSt.com previously reported. The Durango Estate converted the case to a voluntary Chapter 11 reorganization in November 2002.

The $42.08-million purchase price included $36.45 million for the paper mill itself and almost $5.64 million for plant equipment and about 2,700 acres of nearby timberland.