In two separate actions, a Spokane County Superior Court judge has blocked until March 5 trustees' sales of two portions of the Clare House senior housing complex on the South Hill.

Trustees' sales of the two properties, owned by Clare House Apartments LP, of Spokane, had been scheduled for early November, but Superior Court Judge Gregory Sypolt issued a temporary restraining order on the sales after the owner pleaded for more time to sell the property on its own, court documents show. Meanwhile, Whitewater Creek, Inc., a Hayden, Idaho, company that has developed retirement facilities, says it has submitted a letter of intent to purchase the properties.

Also, the lender on a third, vacant parcel there has agreed to a postponement of a trustee's sale of that land until Feb. 6, says Spokane Valley attorney John Gleesing, the court-appointed trustee on two of the three parcels. Neither Spokane businessman Harry Green, one of the partners in Clare House Apartments LP, nor attorneys for the partnership could be reached for comment.

Green, who developed the independent-living retirement complex, originally planned a multiphase, 418-unit campus on 18 acres along the Palouse Highway, just southeast of the Southgate commercial district. The first phase of that project included an independent-living apartment building with 124 units, as well as a community building and other amenities. A second phase of work included 28 "bungalow" units and is owned by a separate company, Clare House Bungalow Homes LLC. It has an assessed value of about $2.5 million. The third property, roughly five acres of undeveloped land with an assessed value of about $430,000, is owned by Clare House Second Addition LLC.

In its order restraining the first of the planned trustee's sales, the court ruled that the three properties are "related and intertwined" and that the value of the entirety of the properties is greater than the sum of their parts, and thus agreed with the owners that selling the parcels in independent trustees' sales would hurt their value.

It also recognized that the timing of the first sale was undesirable because of the current real estate market, and that a receiver is in place to control rental income and profits.

In September, Clare House Apartments LLC was placed in custodial receivership pending the trustee's sale to satisfy a debt of $3.9 million owed on the property. In previous court documents, Green argued that if Clare House doesn't continue to operate with a certain number of low-income units, he will have to reimburse Steadfast Cos., a limited partner in the venture, for the loss of low-income housing tax credits worth about $1.4 million.

Larry Soehren, of Spokane-based Kiemle & Hagood Co., is the court-appointed receiver who is overseeing the apartment complex. He says the motion to restrain the sale was granted in order to give the owners time to try to sell that property together with two other parcels adjacent to it that also are in foreclosure.