Will a Robin Hood save Nottingham timeshare? - Times Union

For Doris Appel and Earle Kelsey, a resort timeshare purchase in the Catskills was a ticket to scenic vacations in far-away places.

The North Chatham couple bought into a unit at Nottingham Village, which had ownership ties to the Friar Tuck Inn, for $12,600 in August 2000. They never once stayed there, but they regularly traded their week for time elsewhere through a large, international timeshare exchange company called RCI.

“We went to some wonderful places,” says Appel, 84. “We went all over the place by trading.”

The two paid a $300 yearly maintenance fee, plus a $150 exchange fee each year; they last paid the annual assessment late in 2009 to cover 2010 and wound up “banking” last year’s week for future use.

But Appel says the bill she expected late last year for 2011 never arrived. She has been unable to reach anyone who could advise her on the status of the timeshare weeks, which she had planned to trade to extend an upcoming Western-states vacation.

Last July, Appel and Kelsey received a letter from General Manager Ricky Caridi saying that Nottingham Village was no longer affiliated with RCI and was joining another timeshare exchange company, Trading Places International.

The letter said the first year membership fee would be paid by Friar Tuck Resorts and asked that timeshare owners send in a completed enrollment form in order to receive a welcome kit and membership card.

The membership materials never arrived, however, and Appel got no answer when she tried to reach Nottingham Village by telephone. She found a number for Trading Places International, and was told that the company only handled Nottingham units for a brief period.

“I’ve been trying to figure out what I could do,” she told me.

Appel already had begun to suspect that the Nottingham unit she and Kelsey owned might have been sucked into a bankruptcy proceeding that led to the closure of Friar Tuck’s facilities. The hotel and the timeshare operation both were owned by members of the Caridi family, and the letter she received in July noted that the Friar Tuck, with its pool, restaurant and bar, would no longer be available to people staying at Nottingham Village.

“I don’t know, in this bankruptcy, whether we are creditors or not,” Appel said.

I am sorry to report that Appel’s inkling that the Nottingham timeshares were wrapped up in the Friar Tuck bankruptcy was correct. In fact, Nottingham Village also is in bankruptcy now, and it’s unclear whether Appel, Kelsey and hundreds of others who bought Nottingham timeshare units will have anything at all to show for their money when the Chapter 7 liquidation process is done.

Appel and Kelsey might even be among the more fortunate Nottingham timeshare holders, relatively speaking. They, at least, had several years of exchange value before the operation went under.

I found reports of people who were sold timeshares as recently as last year, despite the bankruptcy case.

U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Robert E. Littlefield ordered the closure of Nottingham Village and the associated Buckingham Village timeshare properties on Sept. 7.

“Everybody who bought one of these things to trade it lost because there’s nothing to trade,” said Marc S. Ehrlich, a Troy attorney who is the bankruptcy trustee overseeing the complex case.

“There are 750 to 1,000 unit-holders who are caught in this mess, and right now they are in absolute limbo,” Ehrlich said.

Two attempted bankruptcy sales of the resort complex, most recently by Ulster Savings Bank, which foreclosed on a $3.5 million Friar Tuck mortgage, have failed. In both cases, winning bidders walked away after a closer look.

If and when a sale takes place, the status of the timeshare holders should become clearer, Ehlich said, but he declined to speculate on what that status might be.

“Until we get to the end game, I don’t know where they are,” he said.

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Nottingham Timeshare