‘It’s always going to be there’: In Greenbrier County, hotel’s potential sale causes concern

LEWISBURG W.Va. (WVDN) — At Lewisburg’s Carnegie Hall, president and CEO Cathy Rennard watched with some anxiety earlier this month as news unfolded that The Greenbrier Hotel was facing foreclosure due to unpaid debts by its owners, Gov. Jim Justice and his family.

The hotel, a crucial part of The Greenbrier resort, which is Greenbrier County’s biggest employer and the largest tourist attraction in the region, was to be auctioned on the county courthouse steps just three days before Carnegie Hall was set to hold its largest annual fundraiser on the resort’s Chesapeake Lawn.

Rennard, no stranger to the nature of the Justice’s business dealings, was banking on at least one delay for the auction.

“I just kind of made a mental decision that I’m just going to walk on as if everything’s going to be all right, and it appears that it will be, for the moment,” Rennard said.

With days to spare last week, the auction was averted. The Justice companies last Thursday announced an agreement with Beltway Capital , which is associated with credit collection company McCormick 101 who bought the loan documents and deed of trust for the hotel from JPMorgan earlier this year.

Under the agreement, the Justice family is supposed to make a payment to Beltway Capital by Oct. 24. If the payment is made, then “all issues concerning The Greenbrier and Glade Springs are concluded.”

“We’ve cleared this [hurdle] now,” Rennard said of the news. “But yeah, now there’s another date looming.”

The Justice family still owes about $9.4 million on loans procured to purchase The Greenbrier in 2009. But those unpaid loans aren’t the only challenges facing the owners of the historic resort.

Louisiana-based bank First Guaranty is suing The Greenbrier Hotel Corporation — the company, owned by the Justices, that operates the resort — over nonpayment of a $35 million COVID-19 relief loan granted to the company in 2021. According to the lawsuit, there have been no payments made on that loan to date.

And perhaps most pressing is the fate of The Greenbrier employees’ health insurance.

According to a letter sent to workers last week, The Greenbrier Hotel Corporation is at least four months and $2.4 million delinquent — with another $1.2 million soon to be due — in premium contributions to the employee health fund. The company, according to the letter sent by attorneys representing the Amalgamated National Health Fund, has been taking money out of employees’ paychecks without remitting it to the fund.

Insurance coverage was initially going to be suspended for the employees on Aug. 27. When the auction was canceled, however, a union representative said that coverage would extend to Aug. 31.

In a news briefing on Aug. 22 , Justice said there was “no possible way” that employees would go without health insurance and that claims that contributions were delinquent were untrue.

“And I’ll promise you to the good Lord above that insurance payments have been made and were being made on a regular basis just like we’ve done in the past in many ways,” Justice said.

In an email sent Monday, Ronald Richman, an attorney representing the health fund, confirmed that The Greenbrier Hotel Corporation is still four months delinquent on its mandated payments.

Justice, who is running a Republican campaign for the U.S. Senate, has remained steadfast that none of the challenges being brought against his family’s companies — including those facing The Greenbrier, a move by the federal government to put 23 of the family’s coal companies in contempt for nonpayment of health and safety fines and numerous lawsuits across several states looking to collect on unpaid fines, taxes and debts — are legitimate.

Instead, he’s said repeatedly that they’re the result of political attacks waged against him by Democrats who are threatened by the reality of him winning a seat in the Senate and flipping the body red.

‘We just need good, solid ownership’

Rennard, with Carnegie Hall, grew up in the Greenbrier’s shadow in White Sulphur Springs, and the hotel has always been part of her life, she said. Her father and grandfather practiced dentistry at the hotel’s clinic. She spent holiday dinners in the resort’s halls and celebrated numerous special evenings in the ballrooms.

For most of its history, The Greenbrier was owned by Chesapeake & Ohio Railway and its successor, CSX Incorporated. CSX put the hotel into bankruptcy in 2009. Court records indicated the company lost more than $90 million over five years of its operation, including $35 million in 2008.

Despite the financial challenges, Rennard said under CSX ownership, the hotel was always a source of pride for the area. There was “lots of angst” around it changing hands when the hotel went bankrupt about 15 years ago.

If the Justice family can get through this hard spot and come out on the other side and reinvest in the property and all that, that’s great, too. We just need good, solid ownership.

– Cathy Rennard, president and CEO of Lewisburg’s Carnegie Hall

But when Justice purchased the resort in May 2009 , she said, people in the community felt good about a fellow West Virginian “with skin in the game” buying it. Now, she said, it’s obvious the Justice companies have been through some “rocky times.”

And there’s no question that the hotel has some “maintenance issues,” like painting, that need to be addressed, she said. Many of The Greenbrier’s regular customers have noticed a decline in the facility, according to Rennard.

“I am so pro-Greenbrier,” Rennard said. “This county and this state needs The Greenbrier, and needs The Greenbrier to be in tiptop operating shape, and needs to restore that pride that the employee base once had about working there and being there.

“I’m hopeful that we’re going to be able to circle back around to that in one way or another, whether another hotelier comes in and ends up with it, that’d be great,” she said. “If the Justice family can get through this hard spot and come out on the other side and reinvest in the property and all that, that’s great, too. We just need good, solid ownership.”

For Kara Dense, president and CEO of the Greenbrier County Convention & Visitors Bureau, the possible sale of portions of The Greenbrier — the county’s “economic driver” —  caused some concern.

“But in the same realm, we also know that people were coming to the Greenbrier Valley as a destination and to The Greenbrier for over 200 years,” Dense said. “It’s not just some fly-by-night business type of thing. We have every confidence that everything will be taken care of and turn out well, and we will continue to market and do what we do: promote The Greenbrier, promote the destination as we always have.”

In 2022, tourists spent $382 million in Greenbrier County, which Dense said is likely the highest she’s seen in her 17 years at the CVB’s helm. The county ranked fifth of West Virginia’s 55 counties for tourism money spent that year, Dense said, citing the state’s annual economic impact study .

“[In] 2022 we were in the middle of a pandemic, and unlike a lot of destinations, our destination thrived during the pandemic, because we hit all of those areas that people were looking for as far as travel: wide open spaces, small towns, uncrowded areas,” Dense said. “The Greenbrier was a major part of that.”

The resort employs 1,500 to 2,000 workers, depending on the season.

In downtown Lewisburg, business owners say they depend on traffic from Greenbrier guests.

Sibel Mallory moved her boutique from Los Angeles to West Virginia, settling eventually in downtown Lewisburg before the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of her customers come from The Greenbrier, she said.

Lately she’s noticed fewer shuttles bringing guests from the resort to Lewisburg. The buses used to come a couple times a day to bring customers to restaurants and shops, she said, but that changed after the pandemic.

“I wish the Greenbrier owner — I don’t know Jim Justice but he’s the owner — would support us,” she said.

“We can’t cut off to his business,” she said, saying that the stores in Lewisburg aren’t competition for the resort but instead a local attraction for those who stay at it.

Shaye Gadowski, owner of A New Chapter Books on Washington Street, said the store’s customers are a mix of locals, visitors to the nearby New River Gorge National Park and from The Greenbrier. Downtown businesses rely on their neighbors, she said, something that was emphasized to her when a downtown Lewisburg art gallery closed last year.

“Even just having that space vacant for a bit, your foot traffic does change in that sense,” Gadowski said. “You don’t realize how much you rely on your neighbors until someone goes into the next phase of life. So we really do rely on each other.”

‘Pay your bills and let us be proud of how you do business’

Dense, with the Convention & Visitors Bureau, said people in the area are used to “disastrous things” happening.

Since Dense has been head of the CVB, in addition to the Greenbrier bankruptcy in 2009, the county suffered losses during the 2012 derecho and the 2016 floods , which killed 23 West Virginians. Fifteen of those who died were Greenbrier County residents. The bodies of two people swept away by the flood were found on The Greenbrier’s golf course.

“We’ve had some pretty dramatic things that have happened, disastrous things, and we’ve come through them,” Dense said. “And I think there’s just that feeling of hope, and knowing just the stability of the Greenbrier …

“We just feel like it’s always going to be there,” Dense said.

And, unlike other parts of West Virginia where out-of-state landowners can dominate, the Justices are members of the community, too.

Justice and his wife have opted to live full time in their Lewisburg home instead of the Governor’s Mansion, with the governor commuting to Charleston for work when necessary. This has brought criticism for Justice, who opponents have called a “ part-time governor ” due to his residency , his continued coaching of high school basketball teams and his insistence against putting most of his personal businesses in a blind trust despite saying his children are the ones responsible for running them.

But in Greenbrier County, the Justices are neighbors as well as the state’s first family. Rennard said her niece and nephew played on his basketball teams. When the 2016 floods hit, she recalls Justice and his wife, Cathy, driving a John Deere Gator to the makeshift command center in downtown White Sulphur Springs every night to check on response workers.

“His eyes would well up with tears, and I just saw a side of him after that that I had never seen before,” Rennard said. “So I think that’s kind of when I got a glimpse of his big heart.”

But two things can be true, Rennard said. It’s clear Justice cares about the community he lives in, but his family should also be responsible for paying its debts.

“He owes money. I think anybody who you ask around here is going to say, ‘pay your bills,’” Rennard said. “Pay your bills and let us be proud of how you do business.”

The recent challenges at The Greenbrier aren’t exactly unexpected for a business so big. Echoing a sentiment shared repeatedly by Justice, Rennard said it’s normal for businesses to have “bumps in the road.”

Now, she said, she hopes the family can focus on moving forward and catching up on its debts — not just for the community, but for themselves.

“I mean, they’re good people, and so I would like to see their family just be able to live and enjoy life,” Rennard said. “If that means handing The Greenbrier off to somebody else, great. If it means holding on to it and finding a way to really, really keep it moving forward and keep it in the shape that it should be in, then great.”

This article originally appeared in West Virginia Watch .

“ West Virginia Watch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com . Follow West Virginia Watch on Facebook and X .”

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