The owner of The Black Olive says he’s trying to keep the Fells Point restaurant open, even as its Bond Street building heads toward a foreclosure auction next week.

“We are going to protect our beautiful building and restructure whatever we have to,” owner Dimitris Spiliadis said last week.

He and his family own the 814-816 S. Bond St. building, where they’ve operated The Black Olive since 1997.

The family’s Greek eatery is considered one of Fells Point’s first “white tablecloth” restaurants. Over the years, the eatery has won admirers for its fresh seafood and Mediterranean cuisine.

Their building now faces a foreclosure sale stemming from a Baltimore City Circuit Court case filed in June by WesBanco, a bank holding company in West Virginia. WesBanco said in court documents that the family defaulted on a $957,000 U.S. Small Business Administration loan for which the building was used as collateral.

Alisha Hipwell, a WesBanco spokesperson, declined to comment on the active litigation, citing company policy.

Spiliadis filed an emergency motion Feb. 3 attempting to stop the sale. He alleged that the lenders responsible for the loan were not honoring agreed-upon borrower protections.

The motion went on to say the foreclosure sale should be delayed to prevent “irreparable harm” as the Spiliadis family works through a recent medical emergency.

The family wants to refinance the building to address its debts, court documents said. But those efforts have been complicated by an outstanding $773,665 balance on a separate loan that the family received from the Maryland Energy Administration.

A 2008 deed shows the family used the Bond Street building as collateral to secure a $500,000 MEA loan, which went toward a geothermal heating and cooling system for the Inn at the Black Olive — a now-shuttered boutique hotel formerly owned by the Spiliadis family.

After the hotel filed for bankruptcy in 2013, that building at 803 S. Caroline St. was foreclosed on. It sold about a year later to actor Woody Harrelson and businessman Jack Dwyer. The hotel continued operating until 2017, when the property was converted into apartments.

Spiliadis argued in a suit against the state that the MEA loan had been abated by the hotel’s bankruptcy and his subsequent personal bankruptcy in 2015, but the state successfully argued otherwise in court documents.

Spiliadis filed a new suit against the state Feb. 6, claiming that the unpaid loan and resulting liens and security agreement attached to the property are preventing him from refinancing and threatening the survival of his family business.

Neither the Maryland attorney general’s office nor the state’s Central Collection Unit responded to requests for comment.

Now the family’s efforts to thwart their latest foreclosure may be stalling.

On Feb. 4, the court denied the emergency motion to halt or delay the sale of the restaurant building. The next day the family filed another motion challenging that decision, which is waiting for a response.

And the Feb. 6 suit against the state was rejected by the court for noncompliance.

The building is currently slated for auction at 9:30 a.m. on Feb. 18 at the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse downtown, according to a listing by Alex Cooper Auctioneers.

The state values the 814-816 S. Bond St. building at $487,900 for tax purposes, according to assessment records.

Spiliadis does not plan on closing The Black Olive. He said the restaurant is doing well in an increasingly tough market, and that it was busy and booked heavily through the following week or so, including for Valentine’s Day.

He thanked customers for continuing to support The Black Olive.

“We’re not going to allow this to happen,” Spiliadis said. “We hope that any minute the sale will be called off.”