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The Serenata Beach Club in Ponte Vedra Beach was sold at auction on Thursday for $1.5 million.

North American Trading Group Inc. was assigned the foreclosure judgment by DLP Lending ahead of the auction.

There were two competing bids, one for $900 and another for $1.5 million. North American Trading Group Inc. won with a bid of $1,500,100.

News4JAX is still working to learn who the other two bidders were.

The troubled club has been the focus of several I-TEAM investigations as the owners were overcome with financial issues leading to temporary and sudden closures of the club and unpaid staff.

A judge ruled in favor of two different mortgage lenders in July who are owed a combined $14 million.

News4JAX learned of at least four interested parties planned to bid on the club on Thursday. Anyone who made a bid had to make a 5% cash deposit beforehand.

Michael Mota, a Rhode Island businessman who has been serving as the Transition Manager at the Serenata Beach Club since March, was one of the people interested in buying the club. Mota has been the subject of a podcast and multiple investigations by the Boston Globe which characterized him last year as a “businessman who is being chased for money in multiple states by creditors, investors, and vendors.”

“Over the last five months, our objective is really just keeping the asset alive, meaning keeping the club open. It’s a 20-plus year building, maintenance hasn’t been a top priority,” Mota said. “My job was just to get the place back open as best as possible and get it ready for what we see tomorrow, which is the auction.”

Mota was brought in by the current owner of the club Molly Butler. The Rhode Island businessman said one of his business partners introduced him to Butler and he fell in love with the Ponte Vedra Beach property.

Mota said the Serenata Beach Club has not made money in years and he has a goal of making the club more sustainable and profitable. He was behind mandatory changes to membership spending in March requiring minimum monthly spending on food and drinks and members to start paying for beach chair rentals.

Part of his plans include potentially building a 70-room boutique hotel at the 2.6-acre vacant lot across the street from the beach club.

“Again, this is just to offset the costs the members have enjoyed for many years, a very, very low fee to join the club, and unfortunately, it was just never enough to actually sustain it,” Mota said. “Currently, it’s very difficult to keep it the way it is, only because it was never really set up for success and never brought in enough money to actually sustain itself. So any business knows that it has to have other revenue sources to make it succeed.”

A group of members, however, were trying to stop Mota’s bid, unhappy with how Mota’s been running things for the last six months. A decade-long beach club member and retired attorney, Jim Valenti, was leading the efforts by selling hundreds of equity memberships at $35,000 each.

Some members said they were worried about Mota’s past business ventures in Rhode Island. The Boston Globe reported that Mota leased a Providence events venue, The Skyline, that was facing eviction before a settlement was reached Monday.

News4JAX asked Mota how he could assure members of the beach club that something similar wouldn’t happen in Ponte Vedra Beach.

“So there is, there is some Boston Globe stories out there. They’re being sued. It’s fake news. You know, unfortunately, we live in a world where anybody can say anything, which you’re seeing right now. There’s an event venue that we have here in Rhode Island, and now the city is going to settle with us. We were never evicted. We never didn’t pay rent,” Mota said.

An out-of-state investment group, who asked not to be named in this story, and a locally owned corporation were also planning to submit a bid for the Serenata Beach Club at auction.

North American Trading Group Inc. had already purchased the judgment from the lenders seeking foreclosure before winning the bid.

Real estate attorney Barry Ansbacher predicted on Wednesday that North American Trading Group Inc. was going to be the successful bidder.

“If North American Trading wants the property, they don’t have to put up any new money unless they want to bid more than the full judgment,” Ansbacher said. “If you think about it, whoever is buying this doesn’t really know what they’re buying in terms of what the conditions are and what’s going on with the property. So, it’s a lot of money you would have to put up blindly, cash on the barrel, and there’s no going back.”

The I-TEAM did reach the owner of North American Trading Group Inc., whose owners live in St. Johns County, for comment on this story. They declined our request.

The group will have to produce the funds for the property in the next 24 hours.

This story was produced by News4Jax, a Jacksonville Today news partner.