Florence Health Care facility purchased by Maryland firm
According to a legal notice printed for two weeks in March in the newspaper, the Florence Health Care property was sold April 3 at a sheriff's sale. The facility was closed last September and has been vacant since then.
Defendants were listed as The Horizon Group, Inc., a Georgia corporation, Autumn Manor, Inc., a Kansas corporation, and Health Futures Investment Corporation.
The plaintiff, which had a lien on the property, was listed as Health and Retirement Properties Trust, a Maryland real estate investment trust.
Marion attorney Dan Baldwin said he was hired by Adams and Jones, Chartered, a law firm in Wichita, to bid on the property on behalf of the plaintiff's attorney, Philip L. Bowman.
Bowman said Health and Retirement Properties Trust is in possession of the Florence facility but does not yet own it. He said another company has a second lien on the property and has been given a month or so to redeem the property at the price which the Maryland firm bid.
If the property is not redeemed by the deadline, Bowman said, it will become the Maryland company's property.
According to Bowman, the firm intends to seek a buyer for the property if and when it acquires ownership. He said representatives of the firm are maintaining the grounds and have turned the power back on in the facility in preparation for showing it to potential buyers.
"My client is a mortgage lender and is not in the business of operating such a facility," he said.
