On the homepage
Crimefighting
Out There
Mental health
Health care
Hecker's Brainerd dealership remains in limbo
Print this story
E-mail this story
Save to del.icio.us
Share on Facebook
Share on Digg
Minnesota business by the numbers
See Minnesota's top earning companies, CEOs and non-profits
More from Business
A day after a bankruptcy judge shot down its proposed sale, the fate of the shuttered Denny Hecker Toyota/Scion dealership in the Brainerd area remains uncertain.
Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc., which ran the dealership for months after Hecker defaulted on loans, shut the showroom and laid off about 35 employees Sept. 5. Toyota had set a deadline of Oct. 22 for an asset sale to get court approval, then extended that date by a week.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Kressel surprised Toyota by rejecting a sales agreement Wednesday that would have let Hecker sell the dealership's cars, parts and other non-real-estate assets to Twin Cities auto dealer Paul Walser for about $3 million. Toyota officials are considering their next move for what many auto dealers describe as a highly coveted franchise.
"There are a number of options, but at this point we are just going to wait and see what transpires," said Toyota spokesman John McCandless.
Tim Peters, one of several attorneys representing Toyota Motor Credit Corp., said Thursday, "I think it's everybody's hope that some deal gets done at some point ... there's a judge that we are going to have to make happy.''
No one wins, Peters said, by "this thing just dying on the vine."
Kressel balked after learning that the federal bankruptcy trustee was largely left out of negotiations between Hecker and Walser until late in the deal. The judge also questioned the $750,000 consulting fee that Walser had agreed to pay Hecker as part of the deal.
DEE DEPass
Recent Business stories
Blog: Patent Pending
Lights out at U energy conference. Irony police notified.
Just as Lawrence Kazmerski, a top official at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, was about to give the keynote address at the University of Minnesota's annual E3 conference at the RiverCentre in St. Paul, the lights went out, bathing the audience in darkness and a deep sense of irony.