CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — The family of West Virginia Governor Jim Justice has reached an agreement with a debt collection agency to to avoid foreclosure of their historic hotel while running for the U.S. Senate, the resort announced Thursday.
The Republican governor’s family was scheduled to appear in court Friday to ask a judge to stop the auction of the Greenbrier Resort hotel scheduled for Tuesday, but the hearing was canceled.
“Everything is settled, we’re moving forward and The Greenbrier is as complete as it can be,” Justice said at a press conference. “The Greenbrier will stay in our family forever.”
The 710-room hotel has hosted U.S. presidents, royals and members of Congress. The resort hosted a PGA Tour golf tournament from 2010 to 2019 and has hosted NFL teams for training camps and practices. A once-secret 10,080-square-foot underground bunker built for Congress at the Greenbrier during the Cold War in case of a nuclear attack now offers tours.
The hotel was under threat of auction after JPMorgan Chase sold a long-standing governor’s loan to debt collection firm McCormick 101 – a subsidiary of Beltway Capital – which declared the hotel insolvent. In a statement, the Justice family said it had reached an agreement with Beltway Capital “to receive a specific amount, to be paid in full by October 24, 2024.”
The family stated that they had already secured the money, but the judges did not provide any further details on the amount.
“Beltway reserves its rights in the event that the Justice family fails to meet its obligations,” the statement said.
A message left with Beltway Capital was not immediately returned Thursday.
Justice defended his family’s business practices at Thursday’s press conference and reiterated previous claims that JPMorgan Chase’s sale of the Greenbrier loan was a politically motivated attempt to harm his campaign for the U.S. Senate.
“We worked with JPMorgan for 14 years, and then, shortly after the primary election where I won – you will undoubtedly go to the U.S. Senate no matter what anyone under the sun says – it all made absolutely no sense except for political reasons, it made no sense at all,” he said.
Justice said his family did not repay the loan to JPMorgan until June and was notified in July without warning that the loan had been sold. JPMorgan Chase did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Had the hotel been sold, Justice said, “there would have been a bloodbath and devastation for the great people of The Greenbrier that one cannot imagine,” noting the jobs that might have been lost.
The auction, which was scheduled to take place on Tuesday in a courthouse in the small town of Lewisburg, was for 60.5 acres of land, including the hotel and parking lot.
Attorneys for the Justice family filed a motion this week for a temporary restraining order to stop the Greenbrier’s auction, claiming that a 2014 trust deed approved by the governor was flawed because JPMorgan did not obtain consent from the directors or owners of the Greenbrier Hotel Corp. and that the auction of the property violated the company’s obligation to “act in good faith and deal fairly with the corporation.”
They also argued, among other things, that the auction would harm the economy and threaten hundreds of jobs.
About 400 employees of the Greenbrier Hotel received notice this week from a lawyer for health insurer Amalgamated National Health Fund that they would lose their insurance coverage on Tuesday, the scheduled date of the auction, if the Justice family did not pay the outstanding premiums of $2.4 million.
Peter Bostic, a union official with the Workers United Mid-Atlantic Regional Joint Board, said the Justice family has not contributed to its employees’ health insurance for four months and $1.2 million more in contributions will be due soon, according to a letter the board received from Ronald Richman, an attorney with the firm Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP, which is representing the health insurance company.
The letter also said, according to union officials, that some contributions were deducted from employees’ salaries but never transferred to the fund.
Justice dismissed concerns about the claims on Thursday, telling reporters that “insurance payments have been made and have been made on a regular basis.”
“It is impossible that the great union members at The Greenbrier should be without insurance,” he said. “It is completely impossible.”
Justice is running for U.S. Senate against Democrat Glenn Elliott, a former mayor of Wheeling. Justice, who owns dozens of businesses and whose net worth was estimated by Forbes magazine at $513 million in 2021, was indicted in Court proceedings of millions in late payments for debts of the family business and fines for unsafe working conditions in its coal mines.
He began his first of two terms as governor in 2017 after buying The Greenbrier out of bankruptcy in 2009.
Justice’s family also owns the Greenbrier Sporting Club, a private luxury community with a members-only “resort within a resort.” This property was to be auctioned this year in an attempt by Carter Bank & Trust of Martinsville, Virginia, to recover more than $300 million in unpaid business loans from the governor’s family. However, a legal dispute delayed the process.
