Courtesy: Auction.com
Abandoned for 20 years, the Village of Johnsonville in East Haddam now has a new, unidentified owner, who placed a winning bid Thursday of $1.9 million at Auction.com.
Competition between six registered bidders lead to a winning offer of $1.9 million during a commercial property auction that ended at about 1:20 p.m. on Thursday.
Bidding opened at $800,000, and jumped from $1.2 million to the top bid during the last half hour of the auction.
Confidentiality agreements may keep hidden the identity of the owner, along with any intentions for the parcel, until after the closing is complete.
That transaction will likely occur within 30 days, according to Rick Sharga, Auction.com's chief spokesman and executive vice president.
"This is our first ghost town, and it's a very unique asset," said Sharga, adding that his company sold 35,000 properties last year. "I don't believe we've sold a whole town before."
Auction.com and realty company RM Bradley offered the sale of the historic village, located in East Haddam. Originally a mill village, the property contains eight parcels that total about 62 acres.
This historic village presents "a unique redevelopment opportunity to combine the historic value of the 19th-century village with 21st-century living," according to the auction site which lists the property's permitted uses as "single- and multifamily housing, to include market rate and affordable, senior housing, arts-entertainment center, restaurant-banquet facility, B&Bs, inn, retail shops and schools."
Located in the Moodus section of town, the property features eight structures of historic significance, several of which were relocated onto the site to recreate the "once-thriving" Johnsonville mill community. The area also features a covered bridge, wooden dam and waterfall.
Johnsonville has occasionally been used as backdrop, most notably in the video for Billy Joel's 1993 song, "River of Dreams," according to Connecticut Magazine.
According to DamnedCT.com, when it was originally founded in the early 19th century, Johnsonville was home to a number of twine mills, which used the Moodus River as a power source. As industrial technology improved in the later 1800s and early 1900s, water-powered mills fell out of favor, leading to the village's demise.
In the early 1960s, Raymond Schmitt, owner of AGC Corporation, an aerospace equipment manufacturer, bought the property. It seemed he sought to make it a tourist attraction, but was never able to achieve his goal, Connecticut Magazine reported.
By 1994, Schmitt shut down the attraction after he reportedly entered into a disagreement with the Town of East Haddam. He then put the property up for sale.
After Schmitt's death in 1998, his estate began to sell many antiques and other pieces from the property, including buildings.
The land was later purchased by developers with plans to build apartments on the site, but the lack of sewers put an end to that plan. A hotel developer next bought the parcel, but later decided to sell the land.
Source : middletownpress.com
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