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

The center 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.

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

A consortium of global telecommunications companies, including some with Triangle operations, have agreed to buy more than 6,000 technology patents from bankrupt Nortel Networks.

Nortel, which once employed about 10,000 people in Research Triangle Park, said today the telecom group will pay $4.5 billion for its patents.

The buyers group comprises Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research in Motion and Sony.

The consortium appears to have outbid Google, the search engine giant that had originally put in an opening bid of $900 million on Nortel's patents.

Nortel Networks is delaying a global auction on its technology patents by one week after seeing a surge of interest from potential bidders for the company's 6,000-some patents and pending patent applications.

The Canadian-based phone equipment maker, which once had a major operation in Research Triangle Park with about 10,000 employees and contractors, has put off the patent auction until June 27.

The patents are the last major asset for Nortel, which has been selling off business divisions since declaring bankruptcy in January 2009. Tech companies that have taken over Nortel units in RTP include Avaya and Genband.

Nortel has raised about $3 billion through asset sales to pay off its creditors, Bloomberg reported. The company has about 160 people left in RTP.

The Soleil Center property in Raleigh's Crabtree Valley is set to be sold at auction on May 11 at 1 p.m. at the Wake County Courthouse.

A notice of sale was filed on Wednesday in Wake County Superior Court.

Late last week, a court order was issued allowing foreclosure proceedings to move forward against Glen-Tree Investments, the owner of the 5-acre site where the 43-story Soleil Center was to be built.

Work on the Soleil Center has been stalled for nearly three years.

The developer, the Soleil Group of Cary, spent $20 million pouring a foundation that would support a 43-story building.
 

A second downtown Raleigh condominium project is reverting to an auction to reduce inventory.

The Residences at Quorum Center announced this morning that it would auction its remaining 14 condos on Sunday, March 20 in the downtown Marriott on Fayetteville Street.

Starting bids for the condos range from $120,000 to $325,000.

On Halloween last year, West, the 17-story condo project in Glenwood South, auctioned off 32 of its units and recorded $8 million in sales in a single day.

The auctions are a response to a downtown marketplace where a handful of condo projects are going after a shrinking number of prospective buyers.

As the sluggish sales environment has dragged on, more and more projects face pressure to reduce inventory.
 

A private auction for more than 4,000 technology patents owned by Nortel Networks is in its final weeks, representing that last major wave of asset sales for the bankrupt Canadian telecom.

Potential bidders for the patents, which are expected to fetch more than $1 billion, include hi-tech icons Apple, Google, Motorola and Research In Motion, the maker of the Blackberry smart phone.

Reuters news service reported today that some of Nortel's hottest patents relate to wireless communications technology known as 3G, 4G and LTE, or Long Term Evolution, which enable wireless broadband transmissions of video, movies and other data.

The lender was the high bidder at a foreclosure auction held this morning for four North Raleigh office buildings.

The buildings, located just beyond the Beltline between Atlantic Avenue and Capital Boulevard, are part of the 150-acre Highwoods Office Park. They were built between 1982 and 1999 and contain about 256,000 square feet.

The high bid by the lender was $22 million, according to Barry Mann, substitute trustee.

Four buildings in the Highwoods Office Center that are owned by Craig Davis Properties are scheduled to be auctioned off on Sept. 17.

The buildings, part of the the 150-acre Highwoods Office Park in Raleigh, contain about 256,000 square feet.

Craig Davis Properties and New York-based First Point Partners bought the buildings in February 2007 from Raleigh-based Highwoods Properties for $30.4 million. The Cary developer and First Point borrowed $29 million from Column Financial Inc. as part of the deal, according to Wake County property records.

The properties were build between 1982 and 1999 and had been owned and managed by Raleigh-based Highwoods until Craig Davis bought them.

They were 80 percent leased at the end of June, according to a Grubb & Ellis Thomas Linderman Graham survey of Triangle properties.
 

In what is very accurately called a grassroots effort, more than 1,000
tee times are up for public bid, giving recreational golfers in the
Carolinas a chance to play some elite private courses.

The foursome rounds - which can make great Father's Day or Mother's Day gifts - are being auctioned at Rounds4Research.com.

The purpose of the April 7-21 auction is to raise money for golf
turfgrass research, which includes outstanding research programs at
N.C. State and Clemson, according to an event news release.