Izaak Walton Inn Owners Hit with $9.4M Foreclosure Lawsuit Months Before Decision to Shutter

Months before the Izaak Walton Inn’s corporate owners abruptly announced plans to shutter the historic Essex hotel, they faced foreclosure on the property for defaulting on two loans totaling $9.4 million, according to a lawsuit filed in Flathead County last October.

The lawsuit alleges defendants Radify Essex, LOGE GP Holdings LLC, LOGE Holdings LLC, and former LOGE CEO Cale Genenbacher failed to pay their debt obligations on two notes after the loans reached full maturity on Jan. 1, 2025 and April 1, 2025, respectively. The cumulative amount owed under the notes is $9,402,514.90, with interest accruing at a rate of $3,112.34 per day since Oct. 14, 2025.

The lawsuit sheds new light on the financial irregularities that led to Genenbacher’s ouster in November 2025 after LOGE’s board of directors discovered financial the company’s real estate portfolio was in significant distress.

The defendants named in the foreclosure complaint had not responded to the lawsuit as of Feb. 20, and the judge has not issued any rulings or dispositions. The plaintiff in the lawsuit, Stockman Bank, has asked the court to order the property sold at a sheriff’s sale. If Stockman Bank prevails on its foreclosure claim, it will seek to recover the amount of the debt owed. If a third party opts to bid on the property, prospective buyers would have to pay at least the amount of the debt owed to the secured creditors.

The foreclosure case surfaced exactly four months before staff at the Izaak Walton Inn, rebranded LOGE Glacier after an ownership change in 2022, received notice from the company that “the site will be closing its operations in the near future. As a result, your employment with LOGE Glacier is expected to conclude on or about March 6, 2026.”

The Izaak Walton Inn’s 18 year-round employees, all of whom live on the property, have since learned that their employment will continue through March 1 to accommodate two wedding events that had been booked in advance, according to workers who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions. On March 4 at 10 a.m., staff members and their staff must be off the property, while a task force manager with Schulte Hospitality Management Group will oversee the final winding down of the property through March 6, which is when employees are slated to received their final paychecks, according to the workers.

Repeated efforts by the Beacon to contact representatives of LOGE have been unsuccessful, as have efforts to reach Eric Camm with Turning Pointe, LLC, who has been appointed as the chief restructuring officer as the company moves toward bankruptcy.

The foreclosure lawsuit includes multiple tracts of property, including the Izaak Walton Inn; the former Halfway Hotel located just down the road from the hotel, which was converted into employee housing; and a property located across U.S. Highway 2 from the Izaak Walton Inn.

One soon-to-be displaced employee launched a GoFundMe page to help find housing for a workforce that is “now jobless and homeless.

“Anything helps and everything will be split towards all … employees,” according to the GoFundMe page. “Majority of us also have animals.”

As of Feb. 20 the fundraiser had generated $2,640 in donations.

One employee who’s lived on the property for years described being in “a really scary kind of limbo,” but said the entire staff was determined to make the final days at the Izaak Walton Inn memorable for the guests and wedding parties.

“Everyone who’s come up in the last week has been so sweet to the staff, and we’re determined to make this a positive sendoff,” the employee, who asked to be anonymous, said. “But it’s really tough. A lot of us have rearranged our lives to be out here, and to have that change in an instant is really upsetting.”

Listed for sale four years ago with an asking price of $17.95 million, LOGE (prounounced “lodge” and standing for Live Outside, Go Explore), purchased the Izaak Walton Inn for $13.5 million in December 2022.

The scope of LOGE’s financial insolvency is detailed in a series of emails to LOGE investors on behalf of LOGE Holdings, the Radify Fund, LOGE Preferred Equity “and each of the special purpose entities that have received outside investment.” According to the emails, the board of directors of LOGE Holdings learned in November that the company’s CEO, Genenbacher, had used funds to re-purchase a Radify-owned hotel property from the lender who had foreclosed on the property earlier in the year, even though the board “had been told by the CEO that property had been successfully refinanced and remained in the portfolio.”

“Following this discovery, the board learned that there were other instances where the representations that had been made by the CEO were not accurate,” one email states. “In short, the real estate portfolio controlled by the entities above was in significant distress.”

As a result of these discoveries, the board accepted Genenbacher’s resignation in late November 2025.

On Dec. 28, 2025, the board determined “that it was in the best interest of all creditors, investors, employees and vendors to retain the services of a Chief Restructuring Officer and Insolvency Counsel.” On Jan. 8, 2026, LOGE Holdings retained Camm, with Turning Pointe, LLC, as Chief Restructuring Officer. On Jan. 12, 2026, it retained Bush Kornfield as counsel.

“Together, we have partnered with the LOGE CFO, Brett Stewart (who started in November 2025), to continue working through the many issues that have come to light,” the email states.

In a follow-up email, the board explains its decision to “start winding down operations at those properties that are still active.”

“The board did not make this decision lightly, but this was required due to a lack of cashflow at the property level and the inability to continue paying required operating costs,” the email states. “The company is doing everything in its power to look for ways to continue maximizing value in these properties but cannot risk additional liability that would come from missing payroll obligations or other obligations to critical vendors. Right now the dates of the winddowns vary by property, and there is a chance on a few of the properties that a winddown can be avoided, but for now this is a necessary course of action to further limit liability.”

Built in 1939 and located 30 miles east of West Glacier, the Izaak Walton Inn remains one of the few hotels open year-round near Glacier National Park, making it a popular destination in the winter as well as during the summer months.

Employees described being surprised and frustrated by the announcement of the impending closure at Izaak Walton Inn, as well as by revelations that the company was in serious financial distress.

However, some staff members said that, in hindsight, there were obvious indicators of the company’s insolvency, including the repossession earlier this year of a PistenBully machine that LOGE was leasing to groom the property’s prized cross-country skiing trails.

“The groomer getting repossessed was a pretty big red flag, and I don’t know how people looked past that,” Mike Bussard, who’s worked at the Izaak Walton Inn as a seasonal caretaker and snow groomer for the past eight years, said. “We weren’t getting a very clear story, but the information that was coming down through the corporate chain of communication, which was mostly by email, was meant to reassure us that everything was fine and someone just missed the payments. I kept saying, ‘maybe there’s more going on,’ but we weren’t able to get a lot of information.”

With the new grooming machine gone, Bussard said he managed to get the Izaak Walton Inn’s old grooming machine running and continued to groom and maintain the trails to the extent he could.

“Once that machine broke down and they weren’t coughing up the money to fix it, that was kind of the writing on the wall, Bussard said. “So I took off.”

While mountain biking in Washington, Bussard received news of the Izaak Walton Inn’s imminent closure from his partner, Tania, who is also employed by LOGE as the Inn’s seasonal caretaker.

Although Bussard is disappointed by the development, he wasn’t concerned about being displaced, and would have been done with his employment in April. But Bussard was proud of the work he’d invested into the Izaak Walton Inn’s ski program over the last two seasons, earning plaudits for his grooming prowess from within the ranks of the local Nordic skiing community, whose members christened him “Mike the Magic Groomer.”

“That’s the part that bums us out. We were super proud of the reputation we’d built, and that we were able to do that as a team,” Bussard said. “In many ways, the Izaak Walton Inn has been better than ever the past few winters. And that’s potentially going away. But there’s always hope that someone will come in and buy the place and give it what it deserves.”

In the meantime, Bussard is continuing to manicure the ski trails, using a snowmobile and a grooming drag.

“The skiing is just starting to get good again,” he said.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include additional details about the Izaak Walton Inn’s closing dates.

[email protected]