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The media frenzy over the Yellowstone Club and the increasingly contentious divorce proceedings of its owners Tim and Edra Blixseth continues. This weekend, the Associated Press looked at the latest courtroom battles between the feuding club owners, and pointed to financial hiccups that have led to the club not paying some creditors.
The Yellowstone Club was put on the sales’ block by the Blixseths, but last month the potential buyer, a Boston-based private equity firm, opted out of the purchase. That coupled with a $20 million lawsuit from a group of Yellowstone investors including Greg LeMond, has only snowballed the bad news for Tim Blixseth, who learned in a Virginia courtroom last week that his estranged wife requested an emergency restraining order to essentially bar him from controlling the club.
Jamie Cheng, Halogen Guides’ chief analyst, summed up the Blixseth’s troubles as a bad end to a misguided attempt to build a private playground for billionaires, a group that could easily purchase multiple homes and likely doesn’t need a club. “When you’re battling your wife on one front and Greg LeMond on another front and you’re trying to build a vanity club, that kind of takes your attention off your core business, which is the Yellowstone Club,” Cheng told the A.P.
The article, which also appeared in the New York Times, USA Today and on MSNBC.com, detailed financing Tim Blixseth had received and invested in the expansion of the Yellowstone Club World, a destination club with a $1.5 million buy-in. Some $209 million has not been paid back to those lenders. However, financial worries likely aren’t too pressing for the Blixseths. A laundry list of the Blixseth’s property, includes six boats, 15 vehicles, some two dozen homes and two Gulfstream aircraft. No doubt the Blixseth’s will be flying to the Virginia courtroom separately.



