Upper Bundoran goes to its bank

Four bidders brought $100,000 cashier checks to the auction April 18 in front of the Albemarle County Courthouse, but the Royal Bank of Canada ended up with Upper Bundoran for $2,033,000, according to attorney Bill Shmidheiser.

"Nobody bid $2,034,000," he says. "I was surprised."

The 6,500-square-foot brick manor house is part of Bundoran Farm, a preservation development south of town. Its developers insist the project is not in trouble, but acknowledge that the manor house was underwater with its $3.1-million credit line.

The 55-acre Upper Bundoran parcel is separately financed from the rest of the 2,300-acre development, which has seen a spring flurry of lot sales, Robert H. Baldwin Jr., general manager of Edge Valley Preservation LLC, the company developing Bundoran Farm and which defaulted on the credit line, told the Hook in March.