Company buys Black Rock North

COEUR d'ALENE (AP) - An 1,100-acre luxury golf community development project in North Idaho that failed to attract any homebuyers and was foreclosed on has been purchased by Fidelity National Timber Resources Inc.

That company is a real estate subsidiary of Fidelity National Financial Inc.

"We have looked at dozens and dozens of similar projects across the country and this was the only one we became involved in," said Greg Lane, Fidelity's chief operating officer and a senior vice president overseeing the company's investment in Black Rock North. "We see tremendous potential in that region."

American Bank, based in Bozeman, Mont., filed the foreclosure action last year in Idaho's 1st District Court seeking to have Black Rock North sold at a sheriff's auction to repay a $14.6 million loan, plus $400,000 in interest, late charges and legal fees.

Lane declined to reveal when or how much Fidelity paid to acquire the note for the property that overlooks Lake Coeur d'Alene.

Black Rock North was intended to be an extension of the adjoining waterfront retreat called Club at Black Rock, the first luxury golf resort development in the area and a separate entity from Black Rock North.

Work by developer Marshall Chesrown was nearly complete on the 18-hole golf course when the economy began faltering. Unable to attract homebuyers, bills went unpaid and the bank foreclosed.

Lane said the purchase of Black Rock North is an investment intended to benefit the company's shareholders, and not a personal investment by William Foley II, who founded Fidelity and remains chairman of the board.

Foley owns a similar exclusive golf community called Rock Creek Cattle Co. near Deer Lodge, Mont., and has controlling interest in Whitefish Mountain Resort, a ski area.

Black Rock North was in its preliminary stages of development, with a Tom Weiskopf-designed 18-hole golf course nearly finished, but sales at the Black Rock project stalled when the economy collapsed.

By the time the Montana bank foreclosed on the property, nearly $3.6 million in contractor liens had been placed on Black Rock North.