The Point is now in the hands of two of its longtime customers.

Pierre and Laurie Lapeyre of New York City paid a combined $12 million to acquire the Upper Saranac Lake luxury resort property and its furnishings at separate public auctions Wednesday. The acquisition ends a more-than-three-year foreclosure process against The Point’s former owners.

A native of New Orleans, Lapeyre is the co-founder and senior managing director of Riverstone Holdings LLC, a New York City-based private investment firm that focuses on the energy field. His wife Laurie, who was out of the country Tuesday, hails from Washington, D.C. The couple have been visiting The Point for more than 24 years.

“We love the place,” Pierre Lapeyre said. “We want to see it grow and prosper. That’s our intent. Our intent is not to change it from its historical traditions but to give it a nice stable, solid, steady home in terms of ownership.”

Originally built as a private retreat for William Avery Rockefeller in the early 1930s, the great-camp-style resort is located on a 75-acre peninsula. It has a large main lodge and boathouse, and 11 rooms spread across four original log buildings that rent for between $1,600 and $3,500 per night.

The Point’s longtime owners, the Garrett Hotel Group, sold the resort in 2007 to a group of investors who had been associated with Everlands, a high-end club that foundered amid the economic meltdown of 2008-09. In early 2013, the owners defaulted on a $12.5 million mortgage they got through Lehman Brothers to cover part of the purchase price.

Lehman began foreclosure proceedings, and in September of last year, state Supreme Court Judge John Ellis of Tupper Lake ordered the property and its furnishings put up for sale at public auction. In the meantime, PT Property Holdings LLC, a company formed by the Lapeyres, bought the mortgage in March from Lehman Brothers for an undisclosed amount.

That put them in the driver’s seat during Wednesday’s auctions. The Lapeyres could bid up to the amount that’s owed, more than $10 million, without it coming out of pocket, giving them an advantage over any other buyer.

The first auction, for the resort’s land and buildings, was held at 10 a.m. in the lobby of the Franklin County Courthouse in Malone. The Lapeyres were the only bidders and put up $11.5 million.

The dynamic was much different a few hours later when a group of about 40 people showed up for a separate auction at the resort for the contents of each of its buildings: everything from beds, tables and chairs to paintings, animal mounts and kitchen equipment. The furnishings were divided into more than 50 separate lots and auctioned off one by one over the span of more than an hour.

However, the last auction item was a bulk bid on all the lots that, if it exceeded the total amount bid for each lot, would knock out all those other bidders. Pierre Lapeyre bid $500,000 for everything, an amount that drew gasps from the crowd. Since it exceeded the total of all the other bids, and no one else bid higher, he won all the lots. The auction attendees then lined up to get back the deposits they had put down on the furnishings and equipment they thought they had won.

“I think it was an exercise in futility,” said Art Lussi, a co-owner of the Crowne Plaza Resort in Lake Placid and a state Adirondack Park Agency commissioner who bid on several lots at the auction. “I expected a person to bid like $200,000 for it all, but I had no idea that the guy was going to pay $500,000 for it. I don’t know why we went through this exercise.”

Lapeyre declined to comment on the way the auction was set up, other than saying he didn’t think it was “uncommon.” Even if he hadn’t been the high bidder for everything, a term of the auction gave PT Property Holdings LLC, since it owned the mortgage, the right to reject any or all bids.

The Point employs about 40 people. Over the past three years, its operations have been overseen by a court-appointed receiver. General Manager Cameron Karger called Wednesday’s sale “a massive weight off the shoulders and chest.

“What it means is The Point is in amazing hands,” he said. “We couldn’t have hand-picked better owners. The Lapeyres consider themselves guests, but The Point staff consider them family. It’s an amazing day.”

Lapeyre thanked Karger and his staff for their perseverance during the foreclosure process.

“They haven’t missed a beat,” he said. “I give them an enormous amount of credit, in particular the attitude of everybody because a lot of what is so special about the place is it’s not only a beautiful setting and great location, but it’s all about the people. People come here for fun, good relationships, great food and good memories. If you’ve got a group of people working at The Point that aren’t happy, or (are) disgruntled because the future’s uncertain, it makes for a miserable experience. That was absolutely not the case.”

The Point’s former owners, David and Christie Garrett, were among those who attended Wednesday’s auctions. During their ownership, they had bought many of the furnishings that were up for sale. They didn’t bid on anything but said they were curious to see what would happen.

“It’s a beautiful place,” David Garrett said. “It’s in wonderful condition. It’s been kept up well.

“We care very much about the property,” Christie Garrett said. “That’s our concern, that it just go forward in a strong and healthy manner, and someone will now love it again.”

The Garretts said they don’t know the Lapeyres well but they seemed optimistic about the resort’s future.

“We wish them well,” Christie Garrett said.