Old Weed and Ready Plantation, LLC has retained Equity Partners HG, Heritage Global Partners, and Zetabid, collectively, as the exclusive financial advisor for a sealed bid auction of the former Durango Mill/Gilman Paper Company Site in St. Marys GA. The waterfront property consists of 719 gross acres and has been through a long bankruptcy process, demolished, and is ready for resale. The minimum bid amount and reserve price $8,000,000.
Located on the Florida/Georgia line adjacent to Jacksonville, FL, this site is one of the largest industrial zoned parcels for sale on the water in the SE market with major on-site utilities/water rights, transportation (rail, freeway, ocean), and workforce (Jacksonville FL proximity). The site is currently zoned industrial, but a residential development plan with over 1,000 units was approved on the site with a prior residential developer and supported by the City of St Marys. Camden County JDA is under contract to buy 50 acres of the site as a luxury marina development.
The Gilman Paper Company operated a paper mill (the largest privately-owned paper mill in America at the time) on the site from 1939 to 1999, when the company/plant was sold to a Mexican company and renamed Durango Georgia Paper Company which was forced into bankruptcy in 2002. A bankruptcy auction was held in December of 2005 where the site was sold to LandMar for $36.6M (closed end of 2006). LandMar defaulted on the seller financing in the real estate crash of 2007 and the site reverted to the Trustee in 2010.
Fred Cross, a managing director at Equity Partners HG, says that “This is an excellent opportunity to invest in a large tract of waterfront land with unlimited potential. As the real estate market continues to rebound, St. Marys is ideally situated for a good-sized residential development or industrial project.”
Equity Partners HG based outside Baltimore, MD, provides investment banking services and has completed in excess of 500 engagements throughout the United States since 1988. Heritage Global Partners is a leading, full service, global auction and asset advisory firm and has conducted over 4,000 industrial auctions, spanning 30 countries. Zetabid is a national real estate auction firm.