Competing Plans Emerge to Lift Mixed-Use Project Out of Bankruptcy

BEAVERTON, OR-The future owner of the Round at Beaverton Central, a debt-ridden mixed-use project surrounding the city’s downtown light-rail station, will be decided over the next few months by secured creditors and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Portland. The creditors have been waiting for payment since work stopped abruptly on the ambitious, $100 million project in early 1999 for lack of financing.

The creditors will be voting on two proposals that have emerged to revive the 4.5-acre development, one by an original development partner and the other by the city itself in partnership with Enron Microclimates, which holds a $1 million judgment lien against the Round for a state-of-the-art energy system. The original developers of the Round are two companies controlled by Selwyn Bingham and Sylvia Cleaver. Under a plan Cleaver submitted last week in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Portland, she would put up $4.8 million and form an LLC to take back full control of the project and pay most of what is owed to secured creditors, $1 million to Enron and most of what is owed to unsecured creditors. The city’s competing plan, in partnership with Enron, would pay $1.3 million to creditors to take back the project from bankruptcy court.