The developers of a planned apartment complex near Southwest Bond Street and Wilson Avenue, east of the Old Mill District, could start building next spring.

Brad Fraley and Timothy O’Byrne want to build five apartment buildings on the 6-acre former Brooks-Scanlon executive office property, near the Bond and Wilson roundabout. The apartment buildings could include as many as 198 total rental units.

They want to develop in three separate phases, starting with one or two of the buildings, in the area closer to Southwest Bluff Drive.

Late last month, they submitted planning documents to the city of Bend, proposing to split the land into three separate parcels. It’s a step they have to take in order to get bank financing to build, Fraley said.

“We want to phase this in,” he said. The whole 6-acre property is “just too large of a piece (of property) to finance” in a single phase.

He and O’Byrne picked up the land in a property exchange back in 2005. They set to work drawing up plans for a $127 million development, anchored by a luxury hotel and condominiums. The project was dubbed “The Village.”

The 2008 real estate crash halted the project, however. Last year, the bank that financed them looked to foreclose, after saying the developers were delinquent on two loans totaling more than $8 million. Fraley and O’Byrne managed to renegotiate the loan terms, and in October 2012 announced the scaled-back apartment project.

It may not have the eye-popping features or price tag of The Village, but Fraley said the apartment plan could fit a real need for rental housing in the city.

They haven’t settled on an exact number of apartments for the five buildings, or how many bedrooms and bathrooms will make up each unit. But they’re likely to come onto the market in the middle of the city’s price range. A small cafe and private gym are also likely.

The average rent for a two-bedroom Bend apartment was $704 in the first quarter of the year, according to a market survey by the Central Oregon Rental Owners Association.

That survey also put Central Oregon’s rental vacancy rate at just 1 percent, the lowest in six years of surveying by the rental association.

“One thing we’ve noticed is there aren’t really any studio apartments in Bend,” Fraley said, adding they could target some studios in their apartment plan.