By Rose Simone, Record staff
ST. JACOBS The Jakobstettel Inn has been sold to a numbered company headed by Jim McConnell, president of Kitchener trucking company BLM Transportation Group. The inn was sold for $1.45 million in a cash deal on July 16, according to land registry documents.
McConnell said Friday he is not yet prepared to make a formal statement about why he was interested in the inn on Isabella Street in St. Jacobs, and what he intends to do with it. However, a note posted on the Jakobstettel website that says: “The Inn will be opening under new management in August with ten beautiful, distinctly furnished rooms for $199 to $399 per night.”
The two-hectare property includes a gated three-storey Victorian home with 10 guest suites, a heated inground pool with poolside cabana bar and grill, tennis courts and gardens, as well as meeting room facilities.
BLM was founded in 1984 with one truck and has grown into a company with 170 tractors and 500 trailers. It transports electronics, office furniture, general merchandise and foodstuffs throughout Canada, the United States and Mexico.
The Jakobstettel Inn was one of the businesses run by Daniel P. Reeve, whose troubled business ventures are now the subject of a criminal investigation by the Waterloo Regional Police fraud branch.
The fraud branch has received about 110 complaints and is looking into alleged investment losses of about $19 million, according to Sgt. Rob Zensner of the police fraud division. The investments are related to various businesses that were run by Reeve, including DPR Financial Inc., which was based in Cambridge, the Millionaire Group and Millionaire in You Wealth Institute in Waterloo, as well as the Jakobstettel Inn.
When the inn closed this spring, couples who had booked weddings there lost their deposits and were left scrambling to find other locations for their weddings.
Reeve left the inn heavily in debt. Tuerr Holdings Inc., which had first and second mortgages on the property was owed $680,765 on the second mortgage and Brunen Holdings Inc was owed $350,000 on a third mortgage, according to court judgments.
When the inn was advertised in a power of sale process last month, Grant Hagerty of DTZ Barnicke in Waterloo-Wellington, the real estate company that was appointed as broker of record, said the purpose of the “sealed bid” auction process was to get the best possible offer in the shortest time frame.
IMO: What is taking the Waterloo Regional Police so long to make an arrest?
