Obayashi Corporation
The Garhart property, along with several neighboring farms, were optioned by various real estate developers in the 1960s and 1970s as a potential master planned community due to its proximity to the recently completed Interstate 5. It would be the first modern planned city in Washington state, following in the footsteps of earlier planned cities like Longview, built in 1918. The community, named "Olympus", was planned to include in its first phase with for homes, an industrial park, a shopping center, and a golf course. After a local recession in the early 1970s, the development project was sold in 1973 to Tokyu Land Development and designed by a subsidiary of the Obayashi Corporation named United Development. The development was renamed "Mill Creek", beating out the Chinook Jargon word "Klahanie", although there had never been a mill in the vicinity and a waterway of that name was not present in the area until the 2000 renaming of Smokehouse Creek.