mac-o-chee sells to locals

Piatt Brothers built them, Cole brothers buy one

Staff report from Urbana Daily Citizen

Ryan and Jason Cole of West Liberty were the winning bidders for Piatt Castles’ Mac-O-Chee for the price of $510,000 plus closing costs due by Nov. 22.

The sale was held Saturday after a Piatt descendant, Margaret Piatt, opted to sell Mac-O-Chee in order to raise the resources to continue owning companion castle Mac-A-Cheek.

According to the sale’s auctioneer, Tim Lile, the Cole brothers intend to keep Mac-O-Chee available to the public in some capacity.
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“In the interests of that objective, the Coles spent an additional $30,000 purchasing the bulk of the antique furnishings and collectibles sold in the live and online auctions,” said Lile.

One of the Cole brothers told Lile, “We figured if it was in the castle before the sale, we wanted it to remain there for the future.”

Lile said the Coles had to outlast bidders from California, Kansas, Virginia and Ohio. The final back bidder at $505,000 was another local business owner.
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“The question of ‘how much will it bring’ always comes up when initially planning for an auction,” Lile said. “This is never an easy question and the uniqueness of this property made it especially difficult to predict value. We were truly in the mode of ‘value discovery’ on auction day. When asked, I told them I couldn’t be certain, but felt comfortable suggesting an anticipated range between $400,000 and $600,000. Fortunately, for the Piatt family, we landed in the upper end of that spectrum.”

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