When an unoccupied house burned to the ground in L'Hermitage at Beaver Creek last month, it was the latest indignity to befall the Apex subdivision. Abandoned by its original developer, L'Hermitage had become a neglected suburban carcass.

But six weeks later, L'Hermitage has new life and a new name because of GreenHawk, a Raleigh firm that specializes in troubled properties.

GreenHawk cast a winning bid of $5 million for the 23-acre development at a recent auction. Among its first moves was to rename the project Olive Chapel Park.

"We'll try and purge the L'Hermitage name from the Triangle dictionary," said Craig Briner, GreenHawk's president. GreenHawk, which formed in 2002, has kept a low profile in the Triangle as it focused on projects in Charlotte and Charleston, S.C.

Briner said the company targets projects that are "broken," either financially, environmentally or structurally.

The original developer of L'Hermitage, Diversified Communities, walked away from the project in 2008 after it was plagued by slow sales and construction delays. With only two occupied homes and a dozen other half-finished houses, L'Hermitage quickly fell into disrepair and became a poster child for the ailing housing market.

GreenHawk has been eyeing L'Hermitage for a year, thinking the site's proximity to other residential developments and the Beaver Creek Commons shopping center makes it attractive to buyers.

The original plan for L'Hermitage was to have 33 homes and 75 townhouses. GreenHawk plans to keep the lot lines the same but offer smaller and more modestly priced houses and townhouses than Diversified planned.

GreenHawk, which builds houses under the Live Oak Homes brand, expects work on the partially built L'Hermitage houses to begin next week. It will begin offering its own homes early next year.

The $5 million that GreenHawk paid for L'Hermitage was about $1 million more than Diversified paid for the land in late 2006. But Diversified, which had a credit line from Bank of America for up to $21.75 million, spent considerably more to divide the property, run water and sewer service to the lots and build what's there now.