Millennium Development LLC, a company owned by real estate investor and developer Rob Brewster Jr., has filed for Chapter 11 reorganization in U.S. Bankruptcy Court here, listing a $600,000 debt owed to Genesis Financial Corp., of Spokane Valley.

The filing describes Millennium Development as a single-asset real estate owner. It doesn't identify the property on which the secured loan from Genesis is owed, but the bankruptcy petition was filed one day before an earlier scheduled trustee's sale of a Millennium-owned piece of land at 127 S. Howard in downtown Spokane was to occur, legal documents show. That foreclosure proceeding was put on hold, based on the bankruptcy filing.

Brewster, now living mostly on the west side of the state while also spending time in Portland and Spokane on business matters, says, "There's a negative demand for development right now," which was the primary reason for the filing.

The roughly half-acre parcel that was the subject of the foreclosure action is a parking lot located behind the Holley Mason Building, at 157 S. Howard. Brewster bought that historic six-story structure in 1998 and renovated it, and now owns it through a company named Marshall Wells LLC.

In county documents, the Holley Mason Building property shows an assessed value of $5.7 million, while the parking lot behind it shows a value of about $348,000.

Brewster says he bought the lot in 1999 with the intention of developing it, and looked at putting a parking garage or apartments or a combined apartment-parking structure on the site, but demand has been weak, and interested lenders have been scarce.

The 105-year-old Holley Mason is located just south of the railroad viaduct and had been unoccupied for more than 20 years before Brewster bought it and began rehabilitating it. It's said to be the first reinforced-concrete structure built in Spokane and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

That restoration effort was the most ambitious of a string of noteworthy development projects that Brewster launched here over a number of years, including renovation of the Montvale Block building at 1001 W. First.

Brewster had aspirations, though, to develop some even larger projects that have yet to materialize or for which plans were shelved. One of those was a $40 million, 32-story mixed-used development, called the Vox Tower, that he envisioned developing at the east end of downtown.

He says he is continuing to pursue projects here where possible, and as one example is involved with McKinstry Co. on the Great Northern building renovation project on the north bank of the Spokane River west of Hamilton Street.