Doug Bergeron said Aug. 19 he wants to buy Wohali if it goes to a bankruptcy auction.
“It's a little bit early, but it's going to be a bankruptcy auction, so it's going to be the highest bid wins,” he told KPCW. “There's a boatload of constituents that hopefully can be taken care of.”
No auction is scheduled for the 5,000 acre golf and luxury home resort, whose owners filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections Aug. 8.
Prior to the filing, the Coalville community had defaulted on loans, failed to pay contractors and laid off employees, according to multiple lawsuits filed since May.
Bergeron says he wants to take care of the “local vendors” first.
“They're part and parcel of our community — our Utah business community,” he said. “My second level of concern, because I've been a homeowner in communities all my life, are people that purchased homes or have built homes, or in many cases, are building homes in the present … who are going to be faced with a very unstable situation.”
The Park City billionaire wants to transform Wohali into a destination golf course that could host PGA events and rival courses such as Pebble Beach and Bandon Dunes on the Oregon coast.
Bergeron said he could fund golf course maintenance over the next five years but would require a partner to build a hotel.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a hard sell at all, but they have to reimagine the whole project,” he said.
Bergeron declined to disclose the potential hoteliers, but said, “you can imagine who would want to be in Park City that's not in Park City right now.”
The former CEO of Verifone Systems previously self-financed the construction of a $65 million mansion in Deer Crest that was featured in the HBO film “Mountainhead.”
Bergerson serves as chairman of the board of Cantaloupe, Inc., a payments company that is listed on the Nasdaq tech stock index.
