Hess was one of 12 bidders who traveled from across the country for the sale. Motley's Auction & Realty Group of Richmond initially took bids on the property as four separate tracts. First was the 18 acres of land and the 71,422-square-foot building, assessed at $2.34 million.

Bids for the Spancrete production line, concrete mixing system and bridge crane came next.

Then, Motley's said it would take bids on combinations of tracts.

Several people in the audience and on the phone with the Motley crew wanted the equipment only; others bid on the entire package.

Bids went back and forth for several minutes, and Motley men in blue blazers knelt on the concrete floor and talked with bidders or conferred with those who stood in the background, away from the cluster of chairs and big-screen televisions that showed the bids.

Almost 50 minutes into the sale, Motley announced the creditors had decided the property and equipment would be sold together, not separately.

"Looks like you all are going to get to keep this operation here. Congratulations," said James Sorensen, who was hoping to expand his concrete plant in Denver with some of Mid-Atlantic's equipment.

Like Ken Thompson, a bidder from Southern California who works with precast pipes, Sorensen wasn't interested in the property.

But Hess and another bidder, Jignesh Patel of Detroit, were--and their bidding war lasted long enough to get the price from $2.45 million to $2.55 million.

Patel thought the bidding for equipment was in line with what he expected to pay, but said the price for real estate was too high. His company does construction work on military installations in the United States and overseas and would have liked to locate a branch in King George, especially with all the nearby military interests.

"It would have been a nice addition," Patel said.

Hess said his company also had been eyeing the King George property.

He does a lot of work in the Baltimore and Washington area and wanted a facility farther south. "We felt like this might be the right opportunity," he said.

His company will install its own equipment to manufacture precast concrete barriers. It will use other elements of the operation, such as the crane and mixer. Hess said there's not much of a market these days for the type of hollow-core walls that Mid-Atlantic made.

That's why he'll stick with safety and noise barriers and other types of walls used in highway construction.

More information about the company is available online at faddis.com.

Cathy Dyson: 540/374-5425
Email: cdyson@freelancestar.com