Spicer Mansion contents sold
Bargain hunters pick through offerings as transfer of ownership looms
Mystic — As a steady stream of bargain hunters picked through the Spicer Mansion on Saturday morning in the early hours of a weekend-long estate sale, members of the now-shuttered club shared memories of cocktails in the cupola and one pandemic Christmas Eve in front of the fireplace.
Mystic resident Caitlin McEachern Wroblewski and her husband, Chris, had paid a $500 annual membership fee for about four years so they could entertain family and friends in the luxurious hotel.
“We’ve had so many special nights here that we’ll treasure forever,” she said.
The estate sale comes as three years of foreclosure proceedings lodged against mansion owner Brian Gates are expected to draw to a conclusion at the end of the month. Gates purchased the 1853 mansion in 2013 for $750,000. On Saturday, he said he’s put $5 million into renovating and maintaining it.
Spicer Mansion’s ownership is expected to transfer to Steamboat Inn owner Walter “Sonny” Glaser by the end of the month. That’s if the Superior Court approves a move by MMP Holdings, the winning bidder in the October foreclosure-sale auction, to assign its $3.05 million bid on the property to Glaser.
The stately 1853 home was built by Captain Elihu Spicer, a Noank native who was also responsible for construction of the Mystic & Noank Library opposite the mansion on Elm Street.
Glaser, a Greenwich businessman who has spoken fondly of youthful summers in Mystic, offered the next highest bid at $2.1 million. Glaser had previously made two other offers that did not go through: a tentative $3.83 million bid earlier this
year and another for $2.3 million at an auction in March. He was outbid by a $3.52 million offer from Ross Weingarten, a Gates business partner. Weingarten subsequently failed to close on the Spicer Mansion purchase, leading to the second foreclosure sale in October.
The Greenwich businessman in 2019 invested $11.5 million in residential and commercial space in downtown Mystic, including Steamboat Inn, an 11-room hotel overlooking the Mystic River.
McEachern Wroblewski, now a trustee at the library next door, had tears running down her face as she stood in a dining room filled with furniture as well as stacks of fine white china and silver cutlery. Gates said the butter knives, at $30 a piece, cost a hundred dollars originally.
“We have loved this place,” McEachern Wroblewski told Gates earlier in a second floor hallway as she shopped. “Thank you for what you’ve done to bring it back.”
Gates got emotional, too. He said the many claims against him don’t tell the whole story: not the ones outlined in the foreclosure proceedings and not the alleged zoning violations memorialized in a state Superior Court lawsuit filed by the town of Groton. The lawsuit included a request from the town that Gates be imprisoned for his “repeated and willful” flouting of the regulations, though the request was not granted.
Kind words from supporters like McEachern Wroblewski reveal the “real side” of him that doesn’t get reported, he said: “Those are the people who keep me going.”
Ownership
Gates filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May, intending to reorganize his debts while continuing to operate Spicer Mansion. His bankruptcy case has been converted to Chapter 7, in which assets are liquidated to pay creditors.
Mortgage documents in the town’s land records show a $585,000 mortgage taken out by Gates in 2018 that identifies MMP Holdings as a lienholder on personal property including “all fixtures, machinery, appliances, equipment, furniture and personal property of every nature.”
MMP Holdings, the company looking to assign its winning bid to Glaser, was being financed by Worth Avenue Capital, which has the same Guilford address as MMP.
While items from big to small were hauled out of the mansion for new homes on Saturday, Gates told The Day he still owns the property until Dec. 26. He said the items — advertised as ranging from king-size beds to Duxiana mattresses to stoves to countertops — belong to his business, not the mansion itself.
“Bottom line is that there’s two parts of the deal,” he said. “Sonny Glaser bought Gates Realty Holding, which owns the building. That’s it. Spicer Management LLC is the business.”
At one point, up in the fourth-story cupola where Mrs. Spicer waited for her husband to return from sea, Gates pointed down to the shrubbery surrounding the mansion to indicate the extent of what was for sale.
“Everything’s going,” he said. “We are selling everything.”
Glaser on Saturday evening declined to comment at this time.
Private moments
McEachern Wroblewski’s mother, Eileen McEachern of New Hampshire, said she celebrated the first Christmas after the COVID-19 outbreak at the mansion with her daughter and son-in-law because it felt like a safe place.
Both mother and daughter spoke of intimate sunset cocktails in the cupola looking out over downtown Mystic and the water as the sun gave way to Christmas lights.
“You can see all over Mystic,” McEachern Wroblewski said. “Then the lights start to come on, and it’s looking at our Norman Rockwell town.”
McEachern described sitting in front of the fire on Christmas eve as most welcoming. “We never went to a restaurant during the pandemic, but we did come here,” she said.
That sense of privacy is at the foundation of what Gates described as the inn’s unique hospitality. He said actors, directors and politicians were comfortable visiting because they knew their secrets wouldn’t be revealed.
Staff members were not allowed to have cellphones, according to Gates — dinner guests turned them in at the door.
“I never wanted it to be open to the public,” Gates said. “We gave these club members — Hollywood people, normal people just like us — somewhere they could go and be private and have special moments.”
The estate sale continues today.