An online auction for the former Dearborn Hyatt next to Fairlane mall ended Wednesday afternoon with a $5.9 million winning bid.

The identity of the triumphant bidder for the empty 18-story, 773-room property, once the second largest hotel in Michigan, was not immediately known. The auction began Monday and ran until just after 2:45 p.m. Wednesday on the Ten X commercial auction website.

The hotel has sat empty since December 2018 and last operated as the Edward Hotel & Convention Center. It was shut down in the days before Christmas by city of Dearborn officials for alleged code violations and maintenance issues.

The property later was forfeited by its then-owner, Edward Gong, a Chinese national living in Canada, who faced criminal charges at the time that eventually were withdrawn.

More: 10 insane facts about the former Dearborn Hyatt

Gong bought the hotel for $20 million in 2016. In a 2021 sale handled by the U.S. Marshals, the hotel sold for $18.25 million to New York-based Rhodium Capital Advisors, which went on to announce plans — never fulfilled — to transform the empty hotel into apartments.

More recently, a Rhodium-linked entity defaulted on the property's mortgage, which sent the property to sheriff's sale in June. The winning $9.85 million bid at the sheriff's sale was from a limited liability company linked to Birmingham-based Bloomfield Capital. Bloomfield Capital also was the lender for the property's $16.5 million soured mortgage.

Wednesday's auction was said to be a sale of the nonperforming note on the property, with the sheriff's deed.

Representatives of Rhodium Capital and Bloomfield Capital could not immediately be reached for comment. A Ten-X auction official said they cannot release details on auction outcomes until after a sale has cleared.

The winning bid was $5,925,000, which equals a potential purchase price of $6,058,312, according to Ten-X.

Leading up to the auction, the city of Dearborn issued a statement "encouraging potential bidders to be prepared to deliver fresh ideas and adhere to the highest standards for redevelopment."

“We look forward to working with potential investors on this central property but do not intend to be passive actors in its future," Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud said in the statement. "The residents have a vision for this site, and as their voice, we will work to ensure that vision is realized.”

(This story has been updated to add new information.)

Contact JC Reindl: 313-222-6631 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @JCReindl.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Auction of former Dearborn Hyatt ends with $5.9M bid