Former Spiritual Center of America campus outside Boone to be auctioned off

Forest Summit, a 381-acre development outside Boone that was once the campus for the Spiritual Center of America, is to be auctioned off Sept. 14.

The center, about 200 miles west of Raleigh, was constructed in the mid 1990s at a cost of some $40 million.

It includes 26 buildings and nearly 340,000 square feet of dining halls, classrooms, office and warehouse space and 418 apartment units.

The property is owned by Upper Blue Mountain Holdings, an entity formed by brothers David and Earl Kaplan.

The Kaplans were the developers behind Heavenly Mountain, a 7,000-acre resort and center built for followers of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Beatles' guru and founder of the Transcendental Meditation movement.

In 2004, the Kaplans left the TM movement and publicly repudiated Maharishi and ordered all the TM practitioners at the center to leave.

Chartwell Auctions, which is handling the auction, said in a release that the Kaplans are selling the property to focus on a book company they own.

Earl Kaplan founded Books For Fun in 1991 and later sold the business to Reader's Digest for $380 million. He purchased the business back in 2009.

The reserve price, the minimum price the seller will accept, for the Sept. 14 auction is $2,485,000.

“Ownership wanted to send a clear message to the marketplace that they intend to sell this asset while providing equal opportunity of all prospective purchasers to participate in this offering," said Jason Dolph, a broker and auctioneer with Chartwell Auctions.