For a couple of days, one of Lynchburg’s best-known historic properties was heading to the foreclosure auction block.
Villa of Kriselea on Rivermont Avenue, also known as Villa Maria, was scheduled to be auctioned Nov. 30. The auction is being canceled, said Gary Case, a real estate agent for the owners, Dennis and Laurie Gibbs of Castro Valley, Calif.
Case said on Thursday that Dennis Gibbs has been working to refinance the loans used to buy the property.
“On a commercial (loan) you only get a three- to five-year fixed rate and then you have to renegotiate them,” he said. “He was talking to another lender about doing some refinancing on it.”
Meanwhile, the original lender scheduled a trustee sale, which is meant to recover the debt if the lender believes the borrower is not keeping the terms of the loan. Per normal procedure for a trustee sale, it was advertised in a legal ad in Wednesday’s The News & Advance.
Case said the sale was a surprise to him and to Gibbs. They had not heard it was in the works.
On Thursday, Gibbs told Case he had talked to his lender and the sale would be canceled. “He’s worked out something with the lender,” Case said.
As of Thursday afternoon, the office of Sam I. White P.C., which was hired to conduct the sale, said it was not notified the case had been canceled. Case said that it could take some time for the lender to notify the lawyer.
The Gibbses bought the 12,567-square-foot structure and surrounding 10 acres in February 2006 for $1.4 million. Land re-cords in Lynchburg Circuit Court show they used two loans from American Brokers Conduit, the largest having a 6.75 percent interest rate.
They own numerous other properties in Lynchburg, including the Adams Motor Company property on Fifth Street and the original Jones Memorial Library building on Rivermont Avenue. In all, they own 32 properties in Lynchburg worth a total of $4.1 million, city assessment records show.
Villa of Kriselea was built as a mansion for Philip Asa Krise in 1911. Krise was a banker who also built the Krise Building in downtown Lynchburg. From about 1952 to 1983, it was the private Villa Maria Catholic School, then the Liberty Godparents home. Since then several nursing homes were proposed for the property, including one in the 1990s that would have demolished the mansion.
Beginning in 2001 it was renovated as a wedding and event space.
The city assesses the property at $1.42 million.
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