Above: a down payment-eatin' monster of brick and mortar, capable of swallowing
hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time – bid upon it if you dare.

Once again, the former Ramada Convention Center in downtown Eau Claire is without a winning bidder, leaving the foreclosed-upon hotel in hotel limbo for the foreseeable future. The second-place bidder in a sheriff’s sale on Sept. 17 had until Oct. 28 to claim the hotel for $1.651 million. However, the anonymous bidder – who worked via Minneapolis real estate attorney Alan W. Van Dellen – declined to buy the hotel. That means yet another sheriff’s auction will be held – most likely on Dec. 3 – in an attempt to find a viable owner and operator for the forlorn facility at 205 S. Barstow St. The hotel (which has been stripped of its Ramada franchise and now operates at the Eau Claire Hotel) was purchased in 2004 by SB Hotel Management Inc. That company – owned by brothers Amarjit, Surinder, and Kanwal Singh – was foreclosed upon last year by lender Dougherty Funding for failure to make payments. The Singhs had the winning bid of $1.41 million in the first foreclosure auction on July 2, but were unable to make good on it. (They lost a $147,000 down payment in the process.) The second sheriff’s sale, on Sept. 17, had a similar result: The winning bidder, Wayne Miller of SBM Holdings, was unable to meet an Oct. 17 deadline to pay off his $1.655 million bid. (Like the Singhs, he forfeited a $175,000 deposit.) Judge Jon Theisen structured that auction so the second-place bidder could claim the property, too, but that failed to happen. Look forward to déjà vu all over again in the coming weeks.