Rejected by banks, a Washington-based medical practice made a huge step forward toward opening a 36,000-square foot office building thanks to Commercial Lending Solutions, a Chetco Federal Credit Union-owned CUSO.

Yelm Medical Office Building LLC broke ground April 3 on the multi-million dollar facility that will relocate a family practice of seven doctors to a larger space. Scott Ritter, manager of YMOB, said he and his partners went to many financial institutions but were either turned down because of the amount of the fund request or they weren't interested in construction lending.

"Then we met with the team at CLS. They got on board with us and when they described the concept of bringing money together through several credit unions to fund a project of this size we were very intrigued," Ritter said.

Three regional CUs working through CLS provided the financing and conducted their own underwriting and approval processes, according to the CUSO.

"These types of investment opportunities are exciting to us," said Stephen Wymer, business services manager for Northwest Community Credit Union and a participant. "Without the efforts of a CUSO partnering several credit unions together, these types of projects used to traditionally go to banks."

CLS President/CEO Jim Falls said with "good communication and lots of hard work, we were able to put together a loan that most individual credit unions can't due to cap issues, but together and collectively we could."