The Sunriver Village Mall sold Friday for an undisclosed sum to Salem-based Rediscover Sunriver Village LLC, according to Deschutes County records.

Shelli Petersen, chief financial officer for Salem-based Curry Architecture LLC, said Rediscover Sunriver Village is a corporate entity recently created by a group of investors to purchase the 16.5-acre mall. Curry Architecture will be a partner in the group’s redevelopment plans and Petersen said she will be a member of the new management team.

Petersen declined to identify any of the investors but said the group has ties to Central Oregon and would like to redevelop the aging mall.

“I think you have to because what’s there now is not working, it’s not viable, not thriving, so our next task is to see what the community needs and see what’s going to be successful for the investors and the community,” Petersen said.

Petersen said the investor group which purchased the mall does not have any connections with the mall’s previous owners, Silverstar Destinations LLC, or any of Silverstar’s principal investors, including Jon Harder and Darryl Fisher.

Both Harder and Fisher are officers of Sunwest Management Inc., a Salem-based retirement home management company beset with financial difficulties as a result of the economic downturn.

The mall changed hands in a complex deal between Rediscover Sunriver, Silverstar and Silverstar’s lender, Las Vegas-based Vestin Mortgage, which loaned Silverstar the full purchase price of $26.4 million when Silverstar bought the property in December 2006.

Silverstar defaulted on the loan this fall, and last month Vestin initiated foreclosure proceedings against Silverstar, according to county records. Last week, Vestin assigned its interest in the Silverstar loan to Rediscover Sunriver, which then negotiated with Silverstar a bill of sale in lieu of foreclosure.

Petersen declined to specify how much Rediscover Sunriver paid Vestin, saying only that the group didn’t pay $26.4 million and that it would be “pretty safe to speculate it’s less than that given the market we’re in.”

According to the assignment agreement filed with the Deschutes County Clerk’s Office, Vestin received valuable consideration from Rediscover Sunriver for Vestin’s stake in the property. Silverstar then agreed to hand over the property to Rediscover rather than be foreclosed on, Petersen said.

“Silverstar could have fought it, and they could have made it a very difficult process … but they were very cooperative,” Petersen said.

Vestin, which operates three publicly traded real estate investment trust funds, filed a quarterly report in November with the Securities and Exchange Commission saying a purchase agreement for the mall property in the amount of $13 million was scheduled to close on or before Friday.

Vestin could not be reached Tuesday.

Silverstar’s managing partner, John Goodman, said Silverstar is proud of the role it played in its attempt to renew Sunriver and supports the new owners.

“This group appears to have the capability, capacity and motivation to do great things in Sunriver going forward … and (we) believe it’s critical to move forward with redevelopment as soon as possible,” Goodman said in an e-mail.

Ron Day, the president of the Sunriver Owners Association, said he doesn’t know much about Rediscover Sunriver or its plans but is confident the group intends to redevelop the mall.

“I am very pleased we have the opportunity to redevelop the village and I think that will be a huge benefit to the community and we’re looking forward to working with this group, but I don’t have many hard facts,” Day said.

Silverstar had planned to level the existing mall and replace it with a pedestrian-friendly outdoor village that featured three- and four-story buildings with mixed commercial use on the bottom floors with approximately 375 condos on top.

The company went through an extensive planning process and successfully lobbied the Deschutes County Commission to create a specific zoning code for the property to accommodate the company’s development plans. However, some Sunriver residents said last summer they were considering appealing the county’s decision to the state Land Use Board of Appeals.

Petersen said she will move to Central Oregon in the coming weeks to head up the investor group’s redevelopment effort and plans to meet with stakeholders in late January.

“Honestly, I don’t have a lot more to add until we get our arms around the entire mall and put together a redevelopment plan,” Petersen said. “We’re at the beginning stage … but it’s definitely a mindset of our investment group that it’s a long-term investment and the opportunity to allow us to purchase the mall was because of our intent to hold it.”