Saturday, Nov. 07, 2009

Barefoot sites back in play

A new management company has taken over properties at Barefoot Resort and saved a wedding day for a couple left without a venue after Premier Resorts pulled out abruptly last month.

Grand Strand Resorts Inc. was hired by the court-appointed receiver Jennifer Harmon of The Noble Co. to get the registration building and conference center up and running after Premier left and abandoned the buildings Oct. 13.

Harmon was appointed by a Horry County judge in a lawsuit brought against Premier Holdings of South Carolina LLC, a subsidiary of Premier Resorts, by Carolina First Bank for failure to pay loans. Carolina First is also foreclosing on the properties.

"We have just been putting fires out," said Phil Pate, owner and president of Grand Strand Resorts.

The company has also been taking a lot of phone calls, including many from vendors trying to find out about the tens of thousands of dollars that Premier owes them, he said.

The company had already managed some properties at Barefoot and has reached out to property owners who rented out their condos through Premier to be the new rental company. Between 25 and 35 of those property owners, many of whom are owed rental payments from Premier, have signed on with Grand Strand Resorts.

The company was able to keep about 95 percent of the events that had been booked at the conference center, including today's wedding between Katie Allison and Alasdair Dyer.

Allison said the past few weeks have been an emotional roller coaster but she is thrilled to be able to have her wedding at the place she always hoped.

"We were pleased just to hear that they would be honoring our contract and our money. And what they've put in has just been overwhelming," Allison said.

Grand Strand Resorts has upgraded the menu and linens and is providing a free ice sculpture for the wedding. But it is unlikely that Grand Strand Resorts would get the deposit the couple had already given to Premier.

"We've got to bite the bullet some but that's just good business especially when it comes to a wedding," Pate said. He said Allison had done nothing wrong and he felt it was just the right thing to do to make the wedding happen.

"I just saw him throw lifesavers all around," LeeAnne Horton said about Pate. Horton, who worked for Premier for two years, was recently hired by Pate to run catering and conference services.

She said she heard the news that Premier was shutting down on the way to her first vacation in more than a year. Representatives for Premier, which is based in Utah, could not be reached.

"It was like somebody took a bat and hit me across the face and I didn't see it coming," Horton said. "We were fully operational and then, like overnight, it was like somebody pulled the plug."

She said employees of Premier Resorts at Barefoot were in the dark about what was going on, but had been told they were being sold to another company, which did not happen.

Problems continue to surface in the wake of Premier's pull out. Several people who worked at Barefoot have been billed for medical expenses that should have been covered by insurance, Horton said.

She got a bill for several hundred dollars that she said she won't pay out of pocket.

"You would call that insurance fraud," Horton said. "I am not being held responsible for a bill."

It is Harmon's job to look into Premier's finances and she has been going through computer records and paperwork trying to locate bank accounts and trying to establish communication with people at Premier.

"I am doing a lot of that on my own, haven't had a lot of cooperation from the owners, former owners," Harmon said.

She said that Premier operated using a number of different subsidiaries with different tax identification numbers, which is making it difficult to "untangle" the financial situation.

"The foreclosure action is going to continue... In the meantime my job is to continue to try to run things and build them back up somewhat."

Pate wants to be a part of that build up and said Grand Strand Resorts will be marketing the facilities.

"I think there is a great opportunity here," he said, adding that he was interested in the long-term growth of the area.