Auction Block

Members of the Westminster Moose Lodge have raised $4,500 for one of their own -- longtime member Virginia Mitten, who lost her John Street home in a fire late last year."

The parent company of one of Baltimore's busiest auctioneering firms has launched an affiliate to provide leasing, management and consulting services to property owners.The new company is an apparent response to the high number of recent auctions in which lending institutions end up assuming control of commercial properties after borrowers default on their loans.BSC Financial Group, the parent of Atlantic Auctions, has launched BSC Leasing and Management Corp., a company whose focus will be the retail and office segments of the commercial market.

FOR MUCH OF the 1970s and 1980s, American homeowners witnessed such a hefty appreciation in their property values it was easy to think the sky was the limit. That's why the 1990s have brought a rude awakening for those who overbought and speculated that inflation would keep residential real estate prices rising.Several recent news articles have highlighted the difficulties some Marylanders are having in unloading high-end residences. One Anne Arundel County family's dilemma was particularly striking: Having built a dream mansion, they could not find a buyer at the $1.5 million asking price.

The bankrupt Brokerage is heading for the holiday-season auction block -- and some tenants of the food and entertainment complex say that can only mean good tidings.W.C. Pinkard & Co., operating manager of the downtown complex, said yesterday that the Brokerage will be auctioned Dec. 18. The sale was scheduled after bankruptcy reorganization efforts failed and San Francisco-based Bank of America foreclosed in November."Everyone's paying so much rent but not making any money hardly because there is no traffic,"said Hammed Hossainkhail, owner of the Baltimore Grog & Tankard.

Businessman Edward Butler lost control yesterday of his 5-year-old catering facility, the Palladium, when representatives of the Resolution Trust Corp. acquired it at auction with a bid of $1.4 million.The auction of the castlelike property at 2900 Liberty Heights Ave., one of the few minority-owned catering facilities in Baltimore, was a foreclosure sale on behalf of John Hanson Federal Savings Bank, which was placed in conservatorship last month and is now under RTC control.Hanson began foreclosure proceedings more than two years ago, claiming that Mr. Butler's group had defaulted on a loan of more than $1.4 million.

Too often, we tend to romanticize our past. We remember the stoic Pilgrims seeking religious freedom and the gallant Paul Revere galloping through the streets.But this week, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation set out to portray one of the more sordid sides of our history by recreating a slave auction. The skit was a controversial and emotional departure for the normally conservative Colonial Williamsburg, which until now tended to present programs on such innocuous topics as 18th-century barrel making and tobacco farming.

John Unitas' rookie contract - the one that brought the Hall of Fame quarterback to Baltimore in 1956 - goes on the auction block this month. The cream-colored contract, which Unitas signed with the Colts after his release by the Pittsburgh Steelers, was for $7,000 a year. It is expected to bring nearly that much at auction Feb. 23-24, said David Hunt, president of Hunt Auctions in Exton, Pa. "It's hard to value this particular [memorabilia]," Hunt said. "Obviously, things like this don't come up that often."

Belt's Wharf on auction blockBelt's Wharf Landing, a 102-unit condominium complex at 932 Fell St. in Fells Point, will go on the auction block March 27, after foreclosure proceedings initiated by Maryland National Bank against a development team headed by Frank Favazza.Atlantic Auctions Inc. will begin the sale on the premises at 10 a.m. The auctioneers plan to sell eight waterfront town houses individually and seek bids for the bulk of the complex, which has 93 residences.The project's developers defaulted on the mortgage and owed Maryland National about $21.4 million as of Jan. 10, according to papers filed in the bank's foreclosure suit.

If you have been to Colonial Williamsburg, you know what to expect. Lots of candle-making. And ruly mobs of actors in period costume.You go to Colonial Williamsburg to see 18th-century American history in a prettified, cobblestone-street sort of way. Which is my favorite way. You can stay in lodges with fireplaces. You can order roast boar, cooked the way George Washington's mother might have.It's history lite. Which is fine. It encourages time-travel as amusement, which makes it easy on the kids.

A "lost" landscape thought to have been painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir will go on the auction block Sept. 29 on behalf of the Baltimore-born woman who purchased the artwork at a West Virginia flea market for $7. "Paysage Bords de Seine," a 6-inch by 10-inch canvas dating from about 1879, is expected to fetch $75,000 to $100,000, according to Anne Norton Craner, the fine arts specialist for the Potomack Company, the Alexandria, Va., auction house...