Buyer still being sought for former H.P. King department store

BRISTOL, Tenn. – The owner of the former H.P. King department store said Tuesday she’s still looking for a buyer.

Jean Burnette thought she’d sold the 41,000-square-foot State Street structure during an auction last Friday – until high bidder Charles Dixon backed out of the deal at his wife’s insistence.

“The building has not sold,” Burnette said. “There are some people working on it, but until I get a contract, we don’t have a sale.”

Dixon, of Piney Flats, topped all bids at $255,000 last week, but failed to complete the deal after conferring with his wife.

According to auction rules, the purchase price included a 5 percent buyer’s fee and Dixon was obligated to pay 10 percent of the total, or $26,775, to seal his bid to buy the property at 620 State St.
When Dixon returned home to retrieve his checkbook, however, his wife nixed the deal.

“I’ve been in this business 23 years and that’s never happened to me before,” auctioneer Ron Ramsey said in a telephone interview. “But we have shown the property a couple of times since then and I feel confident we will sell the building.”

“It’s a large building and it needs somebody to develop it,” Burnette said. “He [Dixon] didn’t really have any plans, but he did bid.”

Burnette has no plans to hold another auction.

The building and land are valued at about $528,000, according to 2009 Sullivan County property records.

Burnette acquired the building in 1990 for $110,000, and operated an antique mall and restaurant on the ground floor until late 2006.

She sold the building in 2007, but reclaimed it the following year after the Tennessee Department of Taxation seized the property from owners Ricky and Rhonda Caudill for non-payment of taxes.

Burnette, the president of the Believe in Bristol group that has helped drive downtown revitalization, remains hopeful.

“It’s so important to everything else we’re doing downtown. I hate to see it just sit there,” Burnette said.

| (276) 645-2532