...At about two in the afternoon on April 27, Jack Healey opened bidding on the 120-acre property once owned by Daniel Striar. A couple of dozen folks had gathered in the domed Middleborough Town Hall. When a man in a neat leather jacket and casual slacks offered the minimum bid of $1.5 million, heads turned. He was unfamiliar to people in the room. His name was Jason Wilson, general counsel of Strather & Associates of Detroit. Herb Strather, a Detroit-born businessman who had built a fortune investing in real estate and casinos, had funded the Mashpee Wampanoag with millions of dollars during its drive for recognition, and then gone into partnership with Kerzner and Wolman to back the tribe’s effort to open a casino.
By law, abutters had to be individually noticed of the auction by mail. One abutter, Richard Beal, happened to be in the real estate business. Beal stepped up with a bid $5,000 over Wilson’s. But Wilson had been instructed not to come home without the 120-acre parcel, a representative of the casino developers told me. “We needed to control that parcel for our plan to work,” the representative said. “We couldn’t afford to have another player involved.”
The competition wore on, with 31 bids in all.
“One million, seven hundred and sixty-five thousand,” Wilson finally said.
Silence.
“Sold,” declared Healey.
It was only after the auction, Healey told me, that he realized that it was a representative of the casino developers who had successfully bid on the property.
I called Marshall, the tribal chairman, on his cell phone a few hours after the auction. He said the casino developers were already in discussions with Healey and other town officials, and that the talks had predated the auction. “We’ve had a couple of good meetings,” he told me. “We’re still negotiating.”
Healey was only eight weeks from hanging a “gone fishing” sign on his career and retiring. But what a whirlwind six weeks it would be. ...
Original Post: Big money and tough times forces Middleborough's hand
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