The team over at Phatcat's is putting the whole area up for auction on eBay. Check info on their site here  Why would they do this and what is it worth to someone else?

The why is easy enough--too much work to maintain a popular site and not enough revenue from running it.

Eventually anyone would get tired and need to move on. But why is running an area in SL so unprofitable?  Answer: costs and complexity are increasing over time, while new users are not growing--so how much is your customer base worth when it is not on aggressive growth. Not enough is what it is.  It's a great deal for Linden Labs to get people to work and make "wonderous" stuff--for less than what you can make stuffing cold cuts into a sub sandwich. We know Linden is making dough (and a lot apparently) but where's the upside for the mainstream content creators and area operators? Is the grid only profitable for porno and land speculators?