Fernwood is a 440-acre property that includes a 125-room hotel and the 650 Villas at Treetop and Fairway, which has 17,000 vacation ownership members. Resorts Group is a recently formed company, primarily comprised of a team that has managed Resorts USA for the past nine years. It includes Andrew Worthington, president and CEO, and Kevin Lavelle, Mark Turner, Thomas Casale, Kurt Rawding, Josh Herschlag, Gina Bertucci, and a new partner, Harry VanSciver of Marston Mills, MA-based Whitebriar Financial Corp., which specializes in financing resort and timeshare transactions.

The new owner plans to sell Outdoor World to a subsidiary of Privileged Access, a company formed in 2005 by a principal of Chicago-based Equity Lifestyle Properties. The company handles leasing for ELS sites. Bertucci declined to disclose the selling price for this component of Resorts USA, but confirms to GlobeSt.com that the sale will offset some costs of the acquisition from Rank, which is expected to close Dec. 15.

The sale was barely a footnote in a trading statement by Rank discussing its $965-million sale of Hard Rock properties to the Hollywood, FL-based Seminole Tribe of Florida, previously reported by GlobeSt.com. A single paragraph refers to this US holidays division as non-core and states Rank's agreement to the sale for a $32.5-million cash consideration.