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Facing more than $10 million in debts, Empire Farm Brewery in Cazenovia, N.Y., has filed for chapter 11 protection seeking to sell much of its property and assets in order to reorganize and stay open, Syracuse.com reported. The $6 million brewery and tasting room remains open for business as usual. The brewery opened in the summer of 2016 as a spinoff of the Empire Brewing Co. in downtown Syracuse’s Armory Square. The two businesses are separate, so the bankruptcy filing does not affect the brewpub. As part of the reorganization plan, Empire Farm Brewery has entered an agreement to sell many of its assets, including its tasting room, to Wisconsin-based Burnett Dairy Cooperative for $3.25 million. A filing on the reorganization says Burnett Dairy will purchase “substantially all of the brewery’s assets.” Empire recently sold all of its intellectual property rights — including its name, logos and trademarks — to the Harris Beach law firm in Syracuse, which handles the brewery’s affairs. That sale satisfied at least $50,000 in unpaid debts the brewery had with the law firm.

The owner of Upstate New York’s biggest casino has agreed to a takeover by its largest investor, rather than filing bankruptcy in the face of continuing losses and debts, NewYorkUpstate.com reported. Empire Resorts, owner of Resorts World Catskills in the town of Thompson near Monticello, N.Y., said that it has agreed to sell all outstanding shares of its stock to the Malaysian investors who already own 86 percent of the company. Publicly traded Empire Resorts, which also owns the nearby Monticello Raceway harness track, had reported in a recent filing to the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission that it lost $73 million in the first six months of this year and has accumulated $400 million in debts. In the filing, Empire Resorts said it was considering chapter 11 bankruptcy. It also reported a buyout offer this summer from Kien Huat, the investor arm of Malaysian casino magnate J. T. Lim and his global gaming company Genting. On Monday, Empire Resorts announced it would sell outstanding common stock for $9.74 per share to the Kien Huat/Genting group. That was about 15 percent above the share price on Friday, the last day before the sale was announced, according to a report at Yogonet, a gaming industry news site.

A bankruptcy judge has approved the sale of Cloud Peak Energy Inc. coal mines to a business subsidiary of the Navajo Nation, expanding the tribe’s operations into the busy Powder River Basin coal-mining region, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Navajo Transitional Energy Co. is acquiring substantially all of Cloud Peak’s assets, including its coal mines, for $15.7 million cash, a $40 million senior loan and other consideration, including the assumption of $93.9 million in non-income tax and production-royalty liabilities. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross said yesterday that he would approve the transaction, pending the finalized paperwork. NTEC, a limited liability company wholly owned by the Navajo Nation, already owns a mine in New Mexico. Acquiring Cloud Peak’s mines out of chapter 11 will make NTEC the third-largest coal producer in the U.S., NTEC chief executive Clark Moseley said in a statement. Cloud Peak filed for chapter 11 protection in May listing assets of more than $926.6 million and $639.4 million in debt. The company’s mines are located in northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana in the Powder River Basin, court papers said. Marc Puntus, a Centerview Partners LLC partner advising Cloud Peak, said in a court filing that NTEC was the only potential buyer that didn’t require third-party financing and “offered the lowest relative credit risk.”

Retailer Charming Charlie Holdings Inc. filed a motion seeking court approval to quickly offload its intellectual property, arguing that it needs to start the sale before its store closing sales wrap up at the end of August, Bloomberg News reported. Assets potentially up for grabs include trademarks, domain names including charmingcharlie.com, customer files and related transaction data, and social media assets. The retailer says that it needs to begin the sale immediately to “ensure that name recognition in the marketplace remains and there are still employees available to assist with diligence requests.” The case is Charming Charlie Holdings Inc., 19-11534, U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.

Los Angeles’ priciest-ever real estate listing, a 157-acre Beverly Hills parcel known as “The Mountain,” is scheduled to be sold at auction on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported. The vacant parcel with sprawling views of the L.A. basin, also known as “The Vineyard,” was listed for $1 billion last year, but the price has since been lowered to $650 million. The property has drawn interest from a number of Hollywood celebrities and business titans over the years. In recent months, Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos has scoped out the property several times as an investment opportunity, though a source close to Bezos said the e-commerce billionaire has determined that it was overpriced. The upcoming auction follows a failed attempt by the current owner, a limited liability company known as Secured Capital Partners, to secure chapter 11 protection. A U.S. bankruptcy judge in Los Angeles dismissed the company’s petition last month, seeking to put an end to years of litigation and setting the stage for a foreclosure. The company has accumulated more than $200 million in debt on the property, according to court filings, though the borrower has disputed that amount.

More than 550 residency slots at a Philadelphia teaching hospital have fetched a $55 million winning bid at a bankruptcy auction ahead of the facility's impending closure, the Associated Press reported. The residency slots at Hahnemann University Hospital were won by a team of six local health systems at Thursday's auction, topping bids by Tower Health and a California company that wants to reopen the hospital. Christiana Care Health System, Cooper University Health Care, and Main Line Health joined Einstein Healthcare Network, Jefferson Health and Temple University Health System in the winning bid. The salaries and benefits of those residencies are paid by Medicare, which has objected to the sale in bankruptcy court.

A Cloud Peak Energy Corp. auction for its Powder River Basin coal assets scheduled yesterday has been pushed back a week until Aug. 15, the Gillette (Wyo.) News Record reported. Under the terms of the company’s chapter 11 reorganization plan, Cloud Peak has control over the bid and sale process, including setting deadlines. The company has pushed back its bid, auction and sale deadlines several times. Thursday’s auction was pushed back from Aug. 1 when it seemed likely both Cloud Peak and Blackjewel LLC would hold auctions on the same day. By resetting its auction to Aug. 15, Cloud Peak Energy also has another opportunity to name a stalking-horse bidder for any or all of its assets, if it chooses. It can do so any time until two days before the auction. Moving the auction date back means those who object to any potential sales have to file them by the next day, Aug. 16. A sale hearing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court will be held Aug. 19.