Rocky Wilson/Chieftain Working in Enterprise in an 11,000-square-foot headquarters building with no sign on the door, brothers Doug, left, and Tony Chrisman have discovered a niche in affordable housing.

Two brothers who bought their way into a family-owned insurance business in 1989 have changed the focus of that business from insurance to a niche in the real estate market. They now hold the reins to an investment corporation and a property management corporation that employ a total of 200 people throughout the state of Oregon.

And those corporations are looking to expand – to Arizona next and possibly in the future to Washington and Indiana.

For the past 3½ years Tony and Doug Chrisman and employees have operated Chrisman Development Inc. and Viridian Management out of an 11,000-square-foot building across First Street from the Wallowa County Courthouse, in Enterprise. Chrisman Development has developed more than $130 million worth of low-income housing since 1989, and its sister corporation now manages a total of more than 2,700 low-income housing units in the state, but the glass front entry to the firms’ shared headquarters has no identifying signage.

“Why would we have a sign? We don’t have any customers,” says Chrisman Development Vice President Tony Chrisman.

No customers, yet possibly 4,000 tenants and those 200 employees.

Chrisman Development employs 10 highly skilled financial workers and the remaining 190 employees work for Viridian Management.

The origins of what are now Chrisman Development and Viridian Management can be traced to 1936 when grandfather Cecil Chrisman, then a lawyer, bought a business that allowed him to add insurance and real estate to his repertoire. In the late 1940s, Jack Coleman became a partner and Coleman and Chrisman Insurance was launched. In 1973, Cecil retired and Tony and Doug’s father, Bob, became a partner with Jack Coleman.

When the brothers purchased Coleman’s half of the business in 1989, insurance for the logging industry was the driving force of the operation and real estate was a minor player.

“What happened in the early 1990s (in logging) devastated our business,” said Tony, and change became mandatory.

The move away from insurance to real estate acquisition and rehabilitation was not abrupt, yet once Chrisman Development truly found its niche as a specialist in USDA rural multi-family housing, “more and more of our focus turned to real estate,” Tony Chrisman recalled.

Four years ago Chrisman Development sold all its insurance assets to Pendleton-based Wheatland Insurance and on Jan. 1, 2012, launched a separate corporation, Viridian Management, to maintain the array of affordable housing units Chrisman Development has acquired and rehabilitated (now totaling 1,318 units) and to provide the same property management services to the additional 1,400 housing units contracted for such services.

The president of Viridian Management, who also works in Enterprise, is Mark Green who owns Viridian Management along with Tony and Doug Chrisman.

Tony Chrisman says every one of the 2,700 units under the Chrisman Development/Viridian Management umbrella qualifies as low-income housing.

“The tenants we serve are some of the lowest-income, most vulnerable people in our society,” says Tony.

Veridian Management has added a consulting arm that instructs owners of multi-family housing, and clients for this service are from nearly every state.

One key to financing Chrisman Development projects – the largest being a year 2011, nearly $32-million, 239-unit acquisition/rehabilitation project jointly based in the cities of Wilsonville, Mt. Angel, Willamina, Lincoln City, and Ashland – is a tax credit system designed by the federal government to promote affordable housing. Project by project, and Chrisman Development has developed 40 to date, the corporation applies for those tax credits, which are routinely sold to investors. As an example of these credits’ efficacy, Tony cites one acquisition and rehabilitation project that raised $6 million through the sale of tax credits.

During the past 10 years, with new construction at Wallowa River House being the lone exception, every project undertaken by Chrisman Development has been of the acquisition/rehabilitation variety.

In Wallowa County, Chrisman Development has developed about 60 currently-occupied units in Enterprise and another 20 units in Wallowa.