Lake Lure Insider has obtained the actual written proposal Second Mountain, LLC sent the Town's counsel on August 27 — the document Lured Market's own Saturday Facebook post referenced only in general terms as "a few different rates and structures." Paul Brock confirmed to us that this is the real document and cleared its specific terms for publication. Strip away the week's back-and-forth and a simple sequence emerges: Second Mountain offered, on the record, to pay back rent on the spot. It put this detailed written settlement proposal in front of the Town's own attorneys. It says, in its own public statement, that it has made "several proposals" seeking a renegotiated lease. What it received back, across that same stretch, was one settlement offer from the Town with no rent adjustment and a three-day deadline, public pushback from a sitting commissioner calling its ask unreasonable, and — as of Monday night — the Town's first substantive on-record statement since the eviction filing, still without a rent concession attached.

This piece builds on our report on the Town's August 28 settlement offer and our Monday update. For every document and on-record statement behind this story, see our running source-document index.

What Second Mountain actually proposed

This isn't one offer — it's at least three documented attempts, over the course of a single week, to resolve this without an eviction.

At Wednesday's Council meeting, Second Mountain again offered to pay outstanding rent on the spot in exchange for lease reinstatement and dropping its boathouse claim — an offer Town Attorney Marty Benson cautioned against accepting immediately, as we reported in Before the Public Spoke, the Town Did.

The next day, August 27, Second Mountain's attorney sent the Town's counsel the full written proposal we obtained. It's dated August 27, 2026, addressed to the Town's counsel, and titled simply "Proposal from Second Mountain, LLC to Town of Lake Lure." Quoted directly, its core terms: Second Mountain would bring rent current and both sides would "waive past defaults," continuing for now under the existing lease. The parties would then promptly sign an addendum in which Second Mountain "gives up the boathouse and has unlimited access to the Lake via the public slips," gets "a right of first refusal should the Town privatize the Boat Ramp behind the market," and pays a new combined rent for both Suite A and Suite B — $2,500 a month from September 1, 2026 through April 30, 2027, stepping up to $3,000 a month from May 1, 2027 through the existing lease's end date of April 30, 2029. The document also states Second Mountain "may sublet the premises" and proposes new waiver language for future defaults.

Outside the lease itself, the proposal asks the Town to use "best efforts" to get a pedestrian crosswalk built near the Market, for the Town to voluntarily dismiss its summary ejectment action "upon receipt of the August rent payment," for both sides to eventually dismiss the pending Superior Court lawsuit with a mutual release once the addendum is signed, and for the two sides to negotiate a full new lease with clearer physical boundaries between November 1 and December 31, 2026 — reverting to the addendum's terms if that negotiation doesn't produce a deal. You can read the full document here.

Lured Market's own August 29 public statement goes further, saying it has made "several proposals" to the Town seeking rent relief and a renegotiated lease, and that "the Town has refused good faith negotiations." We've only obtained and confirmed one of those documents directly — the August 27 proposal above — so we're treating "several proposals" as the business's own characterization rather than something we've independently verified in full. But even limited to what we can confirm, the pattern is the same: a specific, detailed, written offer to resolve both the boathouse dispute and the rent question together.

The rent math

We've previously reported, and confirmed through the Town's own 2023 meeting records, that the current lease rent is $4,000 a month, a figure set when the winning bid for the building was chosen in November 2023. Measured against that baseline over the proposal's own 32-month span (September 2026 through April 2029): eight months at $2,500 instead of $4,000 comes to $1,500 a month less, or $12,000. The remaining 24 months at $3,000 instead of $4,000 comes to $1,000 a month less, or $24,000. Added together, that's $36,000 in reduced rent over the life of the proposal, covering both suites.

That's a real number, but it's well short of the "more than $100,000.00 over the course of the lease" figure Commissioner Jim Proctor cited publicly over the weekend. One possible reconciliation: the Town's own 2023 records show a different prospective bidder for this same building, Lake Lure Tours, once split its proposal into $3,000 a month for the building and $2,000 a month specifically for boathouse and dock access — implying the water rights alone were valued at roughly $2,000 a month at the time. Add that figure, for the same 32 months, to the $36,000 rent reduction, and you get $64,000 plus $36,000 — almost exactly $100,000. We want to be precise about what this is: it's our own math testing whether Proctor's number holds up against public figures already on the record, not a confirmed account of how he actually calculated it. We've asked him to walk us through his figure directly and will update this piece with his answer.

What came back: an offer with no room to negotiate

Less than 24 hours after the August 27 proposal was sent, the Town posted its own settlement offer at 7:55 p.m. on August 28 — an offer we've previously reported on in detail. Its terms: Second Mountain permanently abandons the boathouse claim, pays $3,218.00 in back rent by Monday morning, and continues under the existing lease at the existing $4,000-a-month rate, with no adjustment for what it's giving up and no revised terms. The deadline gave Second Mountain roughly two and a half business days, across a weekend when Town Hall is closed, to accept or default.

Whatever the merits of either side's number, the sequence itself is stark: a detailed, multi-part negotiated proposal went in on Thursday; a fixed, non-negotiable counter came back Friday night with a Monday deadline. Lured Market's own characterization, in its Saturday Facebook response: "This is not an offer or even a good faith proposal, it is an ultimatum."

Whether the August 27 document is still Second Mountain's operative position, or has shifted since Saturday's post added new terms, is itself a fair question we've put to Brock directly and will update this piece with his answer.

The Town and Commissioner Proctor, in their own words

The Town's public statements across this whole dispute have consistently framed its position as reasonable and its offer as a genuine attempt at resolution, without ever moving on the rent figure itself. Friday's settlement offer cited a Wednesday-meeting exchange between Commissioner Proctor and Paul Brock as evidence of buy-in — though as we reported, the Town's version of that quote dropped the sentence, seconds earlier, where Brock explained the boathouse and the $4,000 rent were never separate things to him.

Proctor made his own position public directly on Saturday, August 29, disputing that Second Mountain's rent concerns are legitimate and stating that a rent reduction "would cost the town more than $100,000.00 over the course of the lease." He framed the choice in his own words: "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." That's Proctor's own version of the same dynamic Lured Market describes from the other side — an offer with a hard line attached, not an open negotiation.

Monday night, in a segment aired by Greenville TV station WYFF News 4, the Town gave its most substantive on-record statement yet, saying in part: "While the town remains committed to resolving this matter, it also has responsibility for protecting the interests of its taxpayers. As the town is defending litigation initiated by Second Mountain LLC, it has made a good faith effort to resolve both cases through settlement and remains willing to work toward a resolution." That statement doesn't claim a deal is close, and it doesn't reference any change to the rent terms in the Friday offer — it restates the same posture the Town has held since Friday, now aimed at a statewide television audience instead of a local one.

Cara Brock, on camera

In that same WYFF segment, Cara Brock spoke on camera: "So no, this is not what we wanted. We don't honestly don't understand at this point. I remain hopeful that somehow level heads may appear or prevail, or someone will step up within that town leadership and say, you know, let's figure out a compromise, and that's all we asked." We're working from a transcript of the broadcast rather than a document, so we're treating this quote as accurate to the segment as aired but open to correction if the exact wording differs once we can review it directly.

What we're not saying

We're not asserting the August 27 document is Second Mountain's final or only position — Brock told us directly it was meant as a starting point for negotiation, and Lured Market's own claim of "several proposals" goes further than what we've directly confirmed; we're labeling both of those distinctions clearly. We're not confirming Commissioner Proctor's $100,000 figure or asserting he arrived at it the way we've laid out above — that's our own analysis, offered to test a public claim against public numbers, not a confirmed account of his reasoning. We're not asserting the Town negotiated in bad faith; the Town's statements consistently frame its position as protecting taxpayer interests while remaining open to a resolution, and we're presenting that position in its own words. And we're not weighing in on how any final agreement should treat Suite A and Suite B, or predicting how or when this resolves — we're laying out what's actually been offered, by whom, and when.

Sourcing Note

The August 27 written proposal was provided directly to Lake Lure Insider and confirmed as authentic by Paul Brock, who authorized publication of its specific terms. The $4,000/month current-rent figure and the Lake Lure Tours boathouse/dock valuation are drawn from Town of Lake Lure meeting records previously cited in our reporting, linked in our source-document index. The Town's August 28 settlement offer and its quotation of the Proctor/Brock exchange were read directly from the Town's own published statement and settlement document, as previously reported. Lured Market's "several proposals" and "ultimatum" characterizations are drawn from the business's own August 29 public Facebook post. Commissioner Proctor's $100,000 figure and "choice" statement are drawn from his own August 29 public Facebook post. The Town's statement to WYFF and Cara Brock's on-camera remarks are drawn from a WYFF News 4 segment that aired the evening of August 31, 2026, as relayed to this outlet via transcript; we have not independently verified the exact wording against the broadcast itself. The Town of Lake Lure has not been asked for comment on the August 27 document specifically as of publication; we will update this piece with any response.

Last updated: 2026-08-31