Local attorney added twist to bidding war

Thursday, May 10, 2001 | 11:17 a.m.

For Mike McKee, it was his biggest sale ever.

In about 15 years of work, the auctioneer from Salt Lake City's biggest previous sale was for $3 million. He called the $47.2 million BLM land sale "a quantum leap" over his past sales.

The sale also was the biggest for many of the hundreds of participants and observers who crowded the Commission Chambers in the Clark County Government Center.

A hush fell briefly hung over the crowd as McKee opened up bidding for 1,905 acres of North Las Vegas land.

A handful of bidders quickly joined the action, raising the total in $50,000 and $100,000 increments past the $40 million minimum.

McKee took two one-minute breaks to allow bidders to catch their breath -- and discuss how far they were willing to go. But the third round, he warned, would be the last.

Developer Ron Tiberti's crew kept up through several million dollars of escalating bids, but dropped out around $43 million.

That left two contenders in a dramatic back-and-forth. One yellow bid paddle was held by developers from Olympia Group, but the competing bids came from a man that most did not recognize: Las Vegas attorney Frank Schreck.

At one point, the bidding jumped $200,000.

"Want to hit $47 million? I've got no problem with that," McKee told the bidders.

In the end, Schreck won the bid. But who was Schreck? And why didn't the Del Webb-American Nevada partnership aggressively bid for the property as expected?

Schreck, as at least some observers figured out, was something of a ringer -- an extra representative for the partnership.

"We were kind of thinking that people were looking at us to bid," said Phillip Peckman, American Nevada chief operating officer. "We thought it might be better to have someone bid for us.

"The funny thing is, after about five minutes everybody knew anyway," Peckman said.

Schreck said after the auction that he's bid on a few things before, such as antique cars. But they cost "a lot less than this," he said.