Landmark Development of Auburn on Wednesday completed its purchase of the former Cavanaugh-family-owned block.

“We have received confirmation that Landmark Development has completed the purchase of the Wells Fargo Block in downtown Auburn today,” Auburn’s Economic Development Manager Doug Lein confirmed in an e-mail to Mayor Pete Lewis. “Developers John McKenna and Brett Jacobsen have confirmed that they are into full design work for a mixed-use project and expect to be in construction this year.”

Bret Jacobsen, general manager of Landmark Development and Investors Capital Group, declined requests for comment.

Auburn Mayor Pete Lewis first made public the closing date and advised people to mark their calendars for March 11 in a surprise comment inserted in his State of the City address at Emerald Downs last month.

The value of the sale has not yet been made public.

Landmark’s plans call for a six-story building, a mixture of retail on the base facing West Main Street and five floors of apartments above that can be set up for condominiums. Its plans reportedly include covering the parking garage on the south side of the lot, which is the only part of the defunct Cavanaugh project ever completed.

Of keen interest to merchants in Auburn’s moribund downtown, city officials expect the building upon completion to put an estimated 400 more people in the downtown, day and night.

Ever since the Cavanaugh family’s plans to redevelop its block on East Main Street splintered in the buzzsaw of its development partner’s finaglings, the vacant gravel lot left behind by that debacle has been an ugly gap in Auburn’s downtown.

According to the its website, the Landmark Group “develops multi-family housing and mixed-use commercial projects through public and private partnerships, from adaptive reuse of historically significant structures to new construction.”