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Bill Walker conducts a foreclosure auction at the former Gallahan's building. None of the onlookers bid on it.
No bidders acted on the now-empty Gallahan's Furniture store in Spotsylvania yesterday, so the property reverted to the project's lender. |
BY BILL FREEHLING
The nearly 82,000-square-foot building that once housed the area's biggest furniture store passed quietly back to the project's lender yesterday.
A commercial foreclosure auction held yesterday for the old Gallahan's Furniture building in Spotsylvania County brought out about 20 onlookers but no bidders. Wachovia Bank now owns the building.
Phil Kennett's Stone-Lee Partners LLC bought the Gallahan's business in June 1995. He moved the business from its original Lafayette Boulevard location to the newly constructed two-story white building at 9400 Market St. in 2001.
For a time, the store's two-story layout with ample natural light and large selection drew in people. Severegn Furniture Management, a company partly owned by Jim Shrawder, took over the Gallahan's lease and business from Stone-Lee about three years ago before closing it last year due to worse-than-expected performance.
The foreclosure auction was scheduled after loan payments stopped coming to Wachovia.
Yesterday at noon, the building was empty other than the couple of dozen people there for the auction. Most attendants were commercial real estate agents there to see the proceedings, but not to place a bid.
"Beautiful building here," said Bill Walker of Walker Commercial Real Estate Services, who was trying to sell the building for Wachovia.
The auction didn't take long. There were no bidders, so Wachovia officially bought the building for $4,770,000. That's about half the building's tax-assessed value and less than what Wachovia was owed on the loan to Stone-Lee.
It's that kind of loss from commercial real estate that has people worried about what the next few years will hold for U.S. banks. To date, commercial foreclosures haven't been a big problem in the Fredericksburg area, but it remains to be seen whether more auctions are to come.
Bill Freehling: 540/374-5405
Email: bfreehling@freelancestar.com
