Bowling Green City Attorney Gene Harmon plans to file foreclosure actions in Warren Circuit Court by mid-June, and the old Bowling Green Junior High School complex at 1141 Center St. is still on his list.

The conversion of the junior high buildings to apartments has been at a virtual standstill for more than three years, with only one of four buildings completed. Property taxes for both the city and Warren County remained unpaid the last time Harmon checked a week or so ago; in March 2008, those were already more than $42,000 altogether.

He said the city sent a letter Aug. 1, 2008, to the primary owner, Woodland Hills, Calif.-based Alliant Capital, warning that the city could foreclose on the property because property taxes from 2006 and 2007 - totaling nearly $18,000 - were still unpaid.

Should taxes remain unpaid, the property would be sold by the master commissioner. The city would bid the amount of delinquent taxes, but anyone from the public could buy it - perhaps another developer.

The city hasn’t been holding off its foreclosure because of the project’s size, Harmon said; he generally files foreclosures in large batches, and a few of the 10 to 15 being considered are still being looked at.

He doubts, however, that Alliant will let the project go into foreclosure. When delinquent property owners get notice of impending sale, they usually pay up, Harmon said - adding that Alliant’s managers have shown some signs that they’ll probably do the same.

“I know they’ve been in contact with us two, three, four times, asking about current payoff amounts,” Harmon said.

The last known project manager, Brian Doran of Alliant, was traveling and thus unavailable for comment, according to his office.

Mayor Elaine Walker said the hangup to financing continued construction appears to be with the state tax credits; Alliant had already sold them, but needed still more money to finish work.

“The last I heard, I thought that there was some movement with the Kentucky Housing Corp., that they had reached some agreement with them, but then I haven’t heard anything more,” Walker said. That was a couple of weeks ago; Kentucky Housing Corp. approved $711,000 in tax credits for the project in September 2002, and renewed them in October 2007.

Previous developer Robert McMaster estimated in 2006 that it would take $2 million to finish the job, but Walker said the latest figure she’s heard put that price at more than $5 million.

There was some talk in mid-2007 of using money from public bonds, already planned to finance downtown redevelopment, to help finish the work. There’s been no further word on that, Walker said. Some of those bonds have already been held up by the flagging financial markets, but projects getting downtown redevelopment funds need to be able to contribute to the eventual bond payoff, she said. Since the state tax credits require many of the apartments to be rented to low- and moderate-income residents, the project would be unlikely to produce much extra revenue for bond payments, Walker said.

Georgia-based McMaster came to Bowling Green in 2002 to build Park Row Senior Apartments. He soon took on the additional job of converting the old junior high into 110 apartments, buying the building from the Bowling Green Board of Education for $800,000.

The total project cost was originally estimated to be $9.4 million, with $5.7 million backed by federal mortgage lender Fannie Mae. Construction was to start in early 2003, with the first units rented in January 2004. But radon problems pushed plans back to August 2003, with completion scheduled for a year later. Meanwhile, McMaster bundled the junior high, Park Row and several other projects into one $25 million-plus financing package.

Work was delayed again, and groundbreaking for both the junior high and Park Row did not come until March 2004. He finished the Park Row apartments, though they went $900,000 over budget. McMaster blamed unexpected work to remove bedrock for further delay, but that expense and the Park Row cost ran the project out of money, bringing work to a near halt in December 2005.

He repeatedly promised that work would resume shortly, although he continued to owe money to local contractors, couldn’t line up new investors and eventually stopped taking calls. Developers in other states said McMaster had a pattern of beginning big jobs and then failing to finish.

In October 2007, Doran’s firm, a major investor from the start, took over. Two months later, Doran said he hoped to restart work in early 2008, but virtually nothing has been heard since.