By: Robin Ford Wallace, Staff Reporter

An auction to sell off property at Sequatchie Pointe, the failed J.J. Detweiler development atop Sand Mountain, is set for Dec. 1 in Ohio, but Chattanooga attorney Valerie Epstein says it won’t happen if she can help it.

“Why is it he wants to sell this property under the radar screen?” said Ms. Epstein Friday. “It doesn’t pass the smell test.”

Ms. Epstein of Berke and Berke is one of the Chattanooga attorneys pressing a class-action lawsuit against Detweiler and his several companies on behalf of lot purchasers at Sequatchie Pointe, which straddles the Dade and Marion (Tenn.) county lines. 

The suit, filed in January, charged Detweiler and crew with failing to complete roads and utilities promised to lot purchasers, along with a laundry list of other offenses, including targeting the elderly, not transferring warranty deeds to purchasers’ names, and collecting real estate taxes on the lots but not remitting the taxes to the county authorities.

When Detweiler sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June, lot owners on both sides of the state line were left in limbo, though Tennessee-side buyers seemed in better shape because of a performance bond requirement in Marion that assured the completion of basic infrastructure such as access roads and water – a requirement that Dade has since put in place by ordinance.

Now a federal bankruptcy judge in Ohio has given Detweiler permission to sell the acreage he still owns at Sequatchie Pointe. Potentially, such a sale could be a boon to lot owners, since if a new developer were to complete the project their investment might still pay off – but not the way it’s being done, said Ms. Epstein. “They’re trying to ram it through in a very short period of time,” she said.

She pointed not just to the unseemly haste of the auction but to the lack of advertising, accusing Detweiler of planning to handpick a buyer rather than go for top dollar. The auction is to be held at the Ohio offices of Detweiler’s bankruptcy attorney, Marc Merklin, she said, and Merklin and Detweiler were applying qualifications to bidding requirements to make it difficult to become a bidder

‘This is all kind of hush-hush,” said Ms. Epstein. “It just goes to show he’s trying to defraud these property owners”

Ms. Epstein and her associates have objected to the auction on several grounds, she said, including the lack of transparency.

The Sentinel will report further on this matter as it unfolds.