Large Eagle County ranch falls into foreclosure
EAGLE COUNTY, Colorado – Eagle County’s largest private landowner is in foreclosure for a ranch north of Wolcott.
Magnus Lindholm’s Piney Valley Ranches Trust lists debts of $4,474,916.97.
It’s scheduled for a foreclosure auction June 20. It went into foreclosure Nov. 3, about the time Lindholm opened a restaurant in the Traer Creek building.
County records show 48 parcels in Piney River Ranch in foreclosure, totaling 2,422 acres.
Repeated attempts to reach Lindholm’s Traer Creek office in Avon were unsuccessful, as were attempts to reach Magnus Lindholm in London. One of this attorneys, Lew Harstead in Boulder, also did not return phone calls.

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Piney Valley Ranches Trust has a post office box in Vail, but its phone number is listed in McCoy with a physical address of 10856 Highway 131, McCoy. No one answered that phone, either.
What this means to Traer Creek’s deal with Avon remains unclear. The Avon Town Council agreed to settlement terms in its long-running series of lawsuits and countersuits with Traer Creek. BNP Paribas is an international financial company that holds Traer Creek’s debt.
Lindholm controls as many as 30,000 acres in Eagle County, according to some local real estate experts. That makes him the county’s second largest landowner behind the federal government. More than 80 percent of Eagle County is federal land.
Piney Valley Ranch is around 5,057 acres and a section of the Piney River runs through it.
Piney Valley River Ranch ranks 1,185th on the list of 8,608 active oil and gas leases in 12 Western states of the U.S., according to a study by Who Owns the West?, an environmental organization.
It ranks 225th among Colorado’s 1,342 oil and gas lessees, the organization says.
The original $3 million loan was with Warren Bank, Warren, Mich., and carried an adjustable rate mortgage.
Lindholm bought the property Jan. 31, 2007, county records show. He took a $3 million loan from Warren Bank, Warren, Mich., and carried an adjustable rate mortgage, according to Eagle County records.
Warren Bank failed and was taken over by the FDIC on Oct. 2, 2009.
An outfit called West RADC Venture now owns the debt. It lists offices in Phoenix and Wilmington, Del.
When the property went into foreclosure last week, that debt had climbed to almost $4.5 million.
Staff Writer Randy Wyrick can be reached at 970-748-2935 or rwyrick@vaildaily.com.
