A sheriff’s sale of Beeson’s Nursery and Garden Center near Lake Forest was called off after authorities learned the owner, Thomas Beeson, had filed for bankruptcy.
As prospective bidders on the 5-acre property gathered at the Lake County Sheriff’s Department, Deputy Sheriff Eileen O’Connel announced “this case has been continued to April 5. Bankruptcy was filed (by Beeson).”
Beeson, of Lake Forest, had filed a bankruptcy petition in federal court in Chicago in a last-ditch effort to halt the sheriff’s sale ordered Dec. 1 by a Lake County judge to pay off $1.9 million in debts.
The petition seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization names Beeson and his wife, Donna, who have 11 children.
“This doesn’t mean I get to keep the corner” at Waukegan and Half Day Roads, said Beeson, who expects the bankruptcy court to allow him to sell the property to pay off his debts.
“It will not be sold in a sheriff’s sale, so I have some control on it,” he said.
O’Connel said a bankruptcy petition automatically halts any civil action involving the property. Any action by bankruptcy court will be announced April 5, she said.
Among those who showed up for the sheriff’s sale was real estate investor Peter Bell, who holds two mortgages on the Beeson property totaling $2.5 million.
Interruption of the sheriff’s sale “delays the inevitable,” said Bell, who operates several real estate limited partnerships from offices in Libertyville.
A lawyer and a real estate manager for Walgreen Co., the drug store giant headquartered in Deerfield, were among the potential bidders on the Beeson property.
“We’re expanding all over the place, adding 400 stores this year,” said Laurie Meyer, a Walgreen spokeswoman. “Any time we hear there is property available, we’re investigating it.”
Walgreen already has a store in the Bannockburn Green strip mall across Half Day Road from the Beeson property, which is located in unincorporated Lake County south of Lake Forest. If the Beeson property were acquired by Walgreen, she said, the store would be relocated.
Beeson said Walgreen is one of many parties interested in his land for development.
They are “one of thousands over the last 10 years that have wanted the property,” Beeson said. “That stupid piece of property is like a curse” in attracting heavy pressures to sell. He said he had hoped to build a retail complex including a new nursery designed to look like a barn.
The tangled Beeson case hinges on a 1992 sale, in which Beeson bought the nursery business for $1.5 million from his parents, Charles and May Beeson of Harvard.
Charles Beeson died in 1995 and the $1.5 million mortgage was placed in a trust. The trustees, siblings of Thomas Beeson’s, sued for foreclosure in 1997, saying Thomas Beeson had defaulted on mortgage payments while running up debts of $1.9 million.
Bell bought the mortgages from the Beeson family trust and from Harris Bank.
Complicating the case, a former bookkeeper for Beeson pleaded guilty Sept. 1 to embezzling about $1 million from the nursery. She was sentenced to 5 years in prison earlier this year.
