Haugh tells GlobeSt the apartment complex is now 85% leased up and other portions of Fairview Village are on the way. The five-year-old project already includes 200 homes and rowhouses that have been built and occupied, a school, a preschoo, a city hall, a gym and a post office. When complete, the community will include 600 residential units, more than 10 acres of retail and commercial space and 130,000 sf of office space.

This summer, a 4,000-sf library will open below four apartment units in Fairview Village as the first phase of a 24,000-sf, 28-unit development. As well, a portion of the project was recently sold off to Target Inc. for a new retail location, says Haugh.

"That puts into play another 4.5 acres next to Target for a pharmacy and a specialty grocer," says Haugh. "The office market is extremely young out here, but because of the industrial growth in the area and the tremendous demographic growth in the Gresham Market, we think it's a market that will come, and when it does this will be an ideal location."

In mid-January, U.S. Bank filed papers that triggered foreclosure proceedings that would have resulted in a June sale of the apartment complex had Holt & Haugh not come up with the upward of $8 million in principal and interest it owed the bank it owed on two past due construction loans. According to real estate sources, the financial trouble is the result of a failed effort to turn a portion of the apartment project, for which U.S. Bank had loaned its money, into condominiums.

U.S. Bank didn't want to fund condos, so Holt & Haugh brought in a New Jersey-based outside investor. When the condos didn't sell, the lack of income put Holt & Haugh behind on its payments, but the outside investor didn't want to help out. "The issues with the property were never a real estate problem," Haugh tells GlobeSt. "They were more partnership and strategy problems, we were trying to sell as condos as the market for them went flat."

Holt & Haugh reverted back to an all-apartment concept and began leasing up the complex, but the loans were more than three months past due. At that time, the bank said it was owed $412,000 of a $618,000 construction loan for two houses, and $7.31 million of a $7.5 million construction loan for the apartment complex, plus $516,544 in interest.