This time, the owner of the Landmark Hotel on the Downtown Mall owes the City of Charlottesville $62,766.62 in overdue taxes.
 Halsey Minor owes the City of Charlottesville more than $62,000 in overdue taxes. The city has a 10 percent penalty for paying after the due date and 10 percent interest annually. Minor says that paying back that amount may depend on the resolution of the bankruptcy trail.
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But he is not alone. As of June 1, more than $1 million in delinquent taxes, real estate, personal property among others, are owed to the city, about three-quarters of 1 percent of the overall operating budget of $140.7 million.
It’s not the first time Minor is listed as a delinquent taxpayer. Minor also owes back taxes to the State of California. As of November 9, Minor still topped the list of Top 250 Delinquent Taxpayers in California, and owes the state more than $13 million in personal income tax. California put a tax lien on Minor in July 2009. Minor has been delinquent to the City of Charlottesville since June 7, 2009.
The money owed to the city is “part of the bankruptcy and litigation,” Minor said via email. Asked about plans to repay, Minor says that “totally depends on where the litigation goes and where the bankruptcy goes.”
In September, Minor filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in federal court in Lynchburg. Chapter 11 is referred to as a “reorganization” bankruptcy, where the debtor can voluntarily file a petition and write a reorganization plan detailing how the creditors will be paid over time. The filing was meant to expedite the resolution of the multiple lawsuits involving the Landmark Hotel, which, according to a September press release announcing the filing, amount to eight between Georgia and Virginia.
At the same time Minor sued Specialty Finance Group (SFG), the financing company that originally gave Minor $23.6 million to build the hotel, in Virginia court, SFG sued him in Georgia. SFG was a subsidiary of Silverton Bank, based in Atlanta, which failed in May of last year and was taken over by the FDIC.
“Because we had already gone through one arbitration that was very costly against Lee Danielson’s company, Hotel Charlottesville, we really didn’t want to go through multiple trials,” says Betty Shumener, Minor’s lead attorney. “Seeing how expensive it is to go to trial, we thought, ‘We need to bring everything in one place’ and most of the witnesses are in Virginia, the project is in Virginia, the parties are in Virginia.”
In July, the result of the arbitration between Minor and former hotel developer Danielson favored the owner. Danielson’s Hotel Charlottesville LLC was ordered to pay $4.2 million in damages and $2.2 million in legal fees for misrepresenting the costs of the construction of the hotel.
But the road to resolution has hit a few bumps. Just a few days after the bankruptcy filing, a federal judge in Georgia ordered the case sent to the Virginia bankruptcy court. The Virginia court then decided to remand the trial back to Georgia.
“We have appealed that decision to the Virginia District Court and hopefully we will reverse that decision so that we can go to a speedy trial in Virginia,” says Shumener.
In the mean time, the Georgia Court has already scheduled the trial for March 14, 2011. “We don’t mind the trial date, we don’t mind when it goes to trial, we just want one trial,” says Shumener.