Coeur d’Alene-based real estate investment lending company Cogo Capital LLC says it plans to re-enter the Spokane market and open an office on downtown’s periphery in February.

Cogo Capital CEO Lee Arnold says the company purchased a building at 217 E. Third, which formerly housed a janitorial supply store, in August and since has been remodeling it. 

“Cogo Capital is a private money lender for real estate investors nationwide, and we also have what we call the fix-and-flip side of the business, through which we repair and resell homes,” says Arnold. “This new office will house both those areas of our business.”

Arnold says upon completion, the new Spokane location will include a 3,500-square-foot office and 11,000 square feet of warehouse space, most of which he says will be dedicated to the company’s home repair and resale business.

He says the company currently has 60 employees at its Coeur d’Alene headquarters, which were recently relocated to 701 E. Front Street, and plans to hire 30 new employees for its new Spokane office.

“We’re still in the midst of remodeling, but we plan to begin hiring for open positions soon and anticipate housing staff at the new location by Feb. 1,” he says.

Cogo Capital had an office in Spokane from 2012 until 2014. At that time, the company leased space at 4610 N. Division, on Spokane’s North Side. Arnold says that location originally was intended to be the flagship office of a planned investment franchise.

As has been previously reported, around the same time Cogo Capital closed its Spokane office in 2014, the Washington state Department of Financial Institutions issued a notice of violation against Secured Investment Corp., the company’s Coeur d’Alene-based parent company. The state agency said Cogo Capital violated the state’s Business Opportunity Fraud Act by offering business opportunities in Washington without registering with the state and without filing required disclosure information. 

At that time, Secured Investment said it was making changes to its lender-borrower referral program to bring it into compliance. Arnold maintains that those charges weren’t a factor in Cogo Capital’s decision to close its former Spokane office.

“We made the decision to close that office because we realized that a majority of real estate investors would rather do business online,” he says. “So we focused on building up our online services and infrastructure instead. Now, we’ve come to a point where we need more space for employees, and a Spokane office allows us to attract more talent here.”