The Town's settlement offer — posted Friday night with a Monday deadline — expires today without an agreement. Over the weekend, Lured Market & Grill publicly rejected it as "an ultimatum," and Commissioner Jim Proctor publicly called the Market's counter-ask unreasonable. Here's what each side said, in their own words, and what today's deadline actually means.

This is a follow-up to our August 29 report, The Town Calls It a Compromise. Here's What Each Side Actually Gives Up. For every document and on-record statement behind this story, see our running source-document index.

Where Friday left off

As we reported Friday, the Town posted a settlement offer at 7:55 p.m. on August 28: Second Mountain permanently abandons any claim to the police boathouse, pays $3,218.00 in past-due rent, and continues under the existing lease at the existing rent — with no adjustment for what it's giving up and no revised lease terms. The deadline was Monday, August 31 — today.

Lured Market's answer: not a rejection, a counteroffer

Lured Market & Grill posted its full response Saturday night, August 29, at 8:25 p.m. The core of it: Second Mountain will still give up the boathouse and the related concession arrangement for non-motorized rentals, but says the rent has to be adjusted to reflect what's being removed from the deal, and the lease needs to be clarified going forward. In the business's own words: "It is absolutely reasonable for the rent to be adjusted accordingly." The post says Second Mountain submitted a written proposal the Thursday after Wednesday's council meeting, offered "a few different rates and structures," and asked the Town to counter or edit the terms — and says it received no response before Friday's take-it-or-leave-it offer arrived instead.

The post also addresses a quote the Town's own Friday statement used. The Town's release quoted Paul Brock saying, "I'm happy to let the boathouse go, and we'll do it. But we need to stop this litigation." Lured Market says the video of Wednesday's meeting shows a line immediately before that one, which the Town's version omits: "We're not getting something that we think we bargained for." The business's read: Paul offered to give up the boathouse as part of a fair resolution, not as a surrender on every other term while facing immediate eviction.

On timing, the post gives a more precise account than we had Friday: the Town's attorney emailed the proposal to Second Mountain's attorney at 6:12 p.m.; their attorney replied at 6:20 p.m. that he hadn't had time to review it and would forward it along; the Town posted the offer publicly at 7:55 p.m. — about an hour and 43 minutes after first sending it — with the Monday deadline attached.

Commissioner Proctor: "Paul Brock wants more"

Hours before Lured Market posted its response — at 2:02 p.m. Saturday, in the Lake Lure Local Facebook group — Commissioner Jim Proctor gave the clearest public Town-aligned account yet of why he thinks the weekend's back-and-forth is happening. In his telling, Paul Brock agreed to the terms Proctor presented at Wednesday's meeting, then "once again, changed his demands." Proctor specifically disputes the idea that Second Mountain can't afford rent on both Suite A (the Market) and Suite B (the gym space Lake Lure Gym is vacating): "we all heard at the same meeting, from folks that want to take over the gym lease, so that is not an issue," he wrote. He put a number on Second Mountain's ask for the first time publicly — a reduction he says "would cost the town more than $100,000.00 over the course of the lease" — and called it "unreasonable, especially considering there were multiple entities originally interested in renting the building." His stated bottom line: "Paul and the Market have a choice: Stop the lawsuit they brought and abide by the current lease, or a new lease is created with a reduction in rent with an upset bid period." An upset bid period would mean putting the space out for other offers before finalizing any reduced rate with the current tenant.

There's a wrinkle in that account worth noting. We're told the prospective tenants interested in the Suite B gym space have their own condition attached to that interest: they're currently concerned about the lease status of the building as a whole, and have asked the Town to carve their space out as its own separate lease — independent of Second Mountain's lease on Suite A — rather than remain bundled together the way the building has apparently been treated to date. If that's accurate, it complicates Proctor's "so that is not an issue" framing somewhat: the gym space's future may hinge on the Town first resolving a lease-structure question of its own, separate from however the Second Mountain dispute is resolved. We have not yet confirmed this directly with the Town or with the prospective tenants themselves, and we're seeking that confirmation.

We haven't independently verified Proctor's $100,000 figure, confirmed the identity of the "folks that want to take over the gym lease," or nailed down the specifics of their reported lease-split request — all three are characterizations we're still checking against documentation. We're also noting, as we have before, that Proctor continues to frame these as personal remarks rather than an official Town position, even though he sits on the Council.

The two accounts conflict directly on one factual point: whether the Suite B rent exposure is a real problem (Lured Market's Friday post, and testimony at Wednesday's meeting from Suite B-adjacent sources previously reported in our coverage) or a non-issue because replacement tenants are lined up (Proctor's account) — a question that may itself turn on whether the Town agrees to separate the two leases. We don't have enough to resolve that conflict as of this writing, and we're not going to pretend otherwise.

What today's deadline actually means

The Town's offer required payment and a signed release by today, August 31. Based on Lured Market's own Saturday post, that isn't happening on the Town's exact terms — the business is countering, not accepting. Lured Market's post says it "fully expect[s] that it still plans to evict us next week," which would track with a previously reported September 3 date connected to the eviction matter.

What we're watching for today: whether the Town responds publicly or privately to Second Mountain's counteroffer, whether the Town moves forward with eviction proceedings now that its Monday deadline has passed unmet, and whether the Town addresses the Suite B prospective tenants' reported request to split their space into its own lease. We'll update this piece, or file a new one, as any of that develops.

What we're not saying

We're not verifying Commissioner Proctor's $100,000 figure, his claim about interested replacement tenants for Suite B, or the specifics of their reported request for a separate lease — those are characterizations we haven't yet confirmed against documentation. And we're not predicting what happens today; we're telling you what each side has said and what we're watching for.

Sourcing Note

Lured Market & Grill's Saturday, August 29 statement — including its account of the Thursday written proposal, the Friday timeline (6:12 p.m., 6:20 p.m., 7:55 p.m.), and the disputed Wednesday-meeting quote — is drawn directly from the business's own public Facebook post. Commissioner Jim Proctor's statement is drawn directly from his own public post in the Lake Lure Local Facebook group, posted August 29 at 2:02 p.m. The settlement offer's terms and Friday timeline are as previously reported in our August 29 piece, sourced to the Town's own posted statement and settlement document. The claim that Suite B's prospective tenants have asked the Town to split their space into a separate lease was relayed to this outlet and has not yet been independently confirmed on the record; we're seeking that confirmation from the Town and from the parties involved and will update this piece accordingly. The Town of Lake Lure has not been reached for comment on the specific claims in this piece — including Second Mountain's counteroffer and the reported Suite B lease-split request — at the time of publication. This piece will be updated if the Town responds or as today's developments unfold.

Last updated: 2026-08-31