Lender Sues to Appoint Receiver for Greenbrier Resort in $360M Debt Dispute

U.S. U.S. District Court in the southern district of West Virginia in Beckley. TRT Holdings asked the court to appoint a receiver to take over the Greenbrier Resort’s assets. The complaint states that this is to prevent the owners from diverting substantial amounts of revenue generated from the Greenbrier Resort to their other, unrelated businesses.

The Justice Family Group filed a complaint on April 12 against TRT Holdings and the Rowlings in the local circuit court of Greenbrier County. The group accused TRT of conspiring to snatch the resort through unlawful and deceptive means. The suit claims the Rowlings conspired with Carter and are attempting to snatch the Greenbrier resort from the local ownership of the Justice family by unlawful and deceptive means.

The Justices urge the court to reverse Carter Bank’s sale and give a final opportunity to pay off the debt.

The loans on the Greenbrier Resort came due on April 15. The owners owe $360 million on these loans, which TRT Holdings purchased. The debt has grown with interest to this amount, following Carter Bank's entry into 14 forbearance agreements over the past two years.

This meeting occurred one week after TRT Holdings paid Carter Bank $289 million for the first lien debt on the resort. Blake Rowling stated, 'We went there in good faith to try to work with them. The threatening nature in which they handled the meeting was not in the spirit of partnership and did not encourage us to try to make a deal.'

' He added, 'They’ve made a couple interest payments which doesn’t bring them into compliance. ' Blake Rowling also stated, 'Banks aren’t in the position to take over control of assets. ' A Greenbrier spokesperson stated that the resort was and is in compliance with its obligations under the loans formerly held by Carter Bank.

The spokesperson described TRT as a predatory out-of-state company trying to prevent the family from paying off the loans and steal the Greenbrier.

The Rowlings visited the Greenbrier in 2024 as advisors to a private equity group that was thinking about investing. During that visit the Rowlings had access on a confidential basis to Greenbrier financial information. The owners now accuse them of misappropriating trade secrets.

Carter Bank reneged on an alleged 2025 deal that would have allowed the owners to pay everything off for $300 million. The owner claimed he had private equity investors ready to buy a minority stake in the Greenbrier, but that process would have taken another 12 months -- too long for Carter to keep extending forbearance agreements over missed payments.

The complaint references a tentative agreement that would have seen TRT forgive $200 million of the current balance, and release liens on coal mines, in exchange for a 50% stake in the resort plus general partner control. That hypothetical would have valued the entire Greenbrier at a minimum $400 million, or roughly $570,000 per room.

That’s in line with what hotel-owning real estate investment trusts have been paying for hotels recently, according to data from analyst Jonathan Falik. The few higher-valued recent hotel deals include two Four Seasons locations that sold for $1.9 million per room, Turtle Bay Resort in Oahu, for $1.4 million per room, 1 Hotel Central Park at $1.1 million per room, and a couple JW Marriotts for about $800,000 per room.

Most transactions are far lower.

In a separate matter, the Greenbrier Clinic was sued last week in a federal class action case for providing faulty mammograms to more than 1,000 women over two years.

Omni Hotels, part of Robert Rowling’s holdings, has 50 locations with 28 golf courses and 20,000 rooms nationwide -- and it makes up the core of Rowling’s $8.8 billion fortune.