Fuqua Homes to Reopen Oregon Factory

The former Fuqua Homes factory, a 125,000-square-foot
industrial space vacant two years, has been sold to a Bend, OR firm that plans to reopen it later this
year. Fuqua Homes closed amid criminal charges of taking deposits and not delivering homes.

The building on Murray
Road, where Fuqua Homes Inc. built manufactured
and modular homes for more than 40 years, sold for $2.7 million, down from a
list price of $4 million. The deal closed Dec. 31, according to Deschutes County records.

The buyer, Murray Road I LLC, was formed in December by
Bradley Kent, a hedge fund manager, and his wife, Melissa Kent. No name was given for the new company.

The former home factory is within an enterprise zone created
in 2010, meaning its owners and lessees may qualify for tax abatements based
upon improvements to the site and the number of jobs created, said Roger Lee,
executive director of Economic Development for Central
Oregon. The site is one of the few of its size left within the Bend city limits, he said.

Fuqua Homes Inc., a Texas-based company, employed 330
workers in 2006, but only 50 by February 2010, according to The Bulletin’s
archives. Legal actions, including involuntary bankruptcy in Indiana and complaints to the Oregon
Department of Justice that it failed to deliver paid-for homes, plagued the
company in its final years. In December 2011, PlainsCapital, based in Dallas,
sued Fuqua and related companies in Oregon
state courts to recover more than $8 million in delinquent loans. The bank wound
up with the Bend
property in a resulting foreclosure.