Audrey Caro
The clock is ticking on a land transfer agreement between Linn County and the City of Sweet Home. City staff was directed in November to negotiate with the county for the 220-acre rock quarry formerly operated by Knife River (formerly Morse Bros.).
The property in question has been owned by Linn County since Dec. 30, 2010 as a result of foreclosure on more than 400 acres against Western States Land Reliance Trust, the previous owner, for nonpayment of property taxes. It is located west of the north terminus of Clark Mill Road.
The county nearly three years ago offered to give the 220-acre parcel to the Sweet Home Economic Development Group, which has worked on the process of transferring ownership.
SHEDG approached the council last October with an offer to partner on the property, prior to new City Manager Ray Towry’s arrival Nov. 14.
The Linn County Board of Commissioners agreed at their June 6 meeting to set a 90-day time limit on the transfer. If that deadline is not met, the land may go to auction.
The commissioners discussed the issue after Commissioner Will Tucker said he attended a two-hour work session in Sweet Home on June 5.
Towry called the meeting and invited representatives from county and state agencies, as well as private land owners from the Santiam River Development Company, Albany & Eastern Railroad and WSLRT Managing Trustee Dan Desler.
“He was invited because he has demonstrated an interest in helping to develop the property,” Towry said of Desler.
Towry asked an Albany Democrat-Herald reporter who planned to report on Monday’s meeting in Sweet Home to leave. Towry said that it was not an open meeting because “there were private investors who may or may not want their business plans shared publicly.”
“We wanted to get everybody around the table, so that everybody understood potential barriers, and then develop a plan to move forward in kind of a holistic manner,” Towry said.
City councilors attended the meeting, but they did not form a quorum.
Tucker said Desler, as far as he is concerned, is out of the picture as county officials mull the property’s future.
“(Desler) spoke a couple of times about his $31 million investment that he has in that property,” Tucker said. “He kept passing out copies of his plan and every time he put one on my desk, I’d pass it back to him. I don’t want to see his plan. He has nothing to do with it.”
Tucker added the county is not ready “to do something” with the upper portion of the property but said “there is a developer who owns the 300 acre piece up there and they’re getting interest from companies about locating and buying pieces of property up there for future expansion.”
When Commissioner Roger Nyquist met with the Sweet Home City Council last fall about transferring the property, he said he would like to have the issue resolved by the end of 2016.
During a discussion of the situation at the June 6 County Commission meeting, Commissioner John Lindsey said the only entities that should be involved in the county land transfer discussions are SHEDG and the city of Sweet Home.
“I’m sorry, I do not understand these other people that keep inserting themselves in the process,” Lindsey said. “Either we’re going to transfer for a public use…”
Nyquist finished his sentence: “…or we’re going to put it up for auction.”
Tucker, who has been in communication with Towry, said he would express this to him.
“The deal is we’ve put a lot of public money out for the improvements of the property,” Lindsey said. “We’ve put a lot of money into this, to clean it up. We’ve got the deed straightened out, we’ve got the properties lined to where (deeds are straightened out for) the people on the river. Everything’s clean. I do not understand why this has not been transferred.”
Nyquist estimated the county has spent between $200,000 and $250,000, including staff time, on the property. He did not have a ledger in front of him, but consulted Ralph Wyatt, Linn County administrator.
“We spent that money because we felt like we needed to,” Nyquist said. “(The property) needs to be utilized to improve the local economy of Sweet Home.”
Towry said he was surprised when Tucker called to tell him about the 90-day deadline after the commission meeting.
“I felt that putting that meeting together (on June 5), we had kind of a who’s who as well as several city staff members, our engineering staff, our planning staff all there, it should have been a pretty good sign to them of our intent to move forward,” Towry said.
Towry started as city manager on Nov. 14 after Craig Martin entered into “involuntary retirement” from the position in April of 2016.
Martin left notes on the property, which Towry has reviewed, as well as binders full of information on it.
“The city, though, hasn’t been involved in the whole process and I think that’s kind of a key to this,” Towry said.
“Before, it was just SHEDG. I think the city’s been involved in this now for, I’m going to say nine months. Not a whole lot of time prior to when I arrived about six months ago. So it would be nine to 10 months. So I thought we had this great meeting and agreed to get back together and talk about potential development options and these revenue streams and all kinds of stuff.”
He said he understands the commissioners’ frustrations.
“From their point of view, we’ve been dealing with this for five years,” Towry said. “At the same point in time, I feel like we’ve communicated. We have a vacant public works director, we have a vacant community development director and I feel like we apprised them that this would be A1 on their list, essentially, when we got them filled.
“So I was a little surprised, but something lingers on your plate for too long and it’s time to get it off your plate. I get that.”
He said Sweet Home will try to meet the 90-day deadline.
“We’re working with the city,” said Ron Moore, SHEDG president. “We’re going to work with them and do the best we can.”
While city staff is working on the property transfer, Towry said some other concerns were discussed at the June 5 meeting.
“Do we want to sit there and work with SHEDG and become involved in developing this regional park attraction? And then what’s going to go in next door to it?” Towry asked.
“We wanted to get everybody around the table and just talk about it. How do we foresee going forward and how can we all work together for the highest and best use of this land for the community of Sweet Home.”
The county and Knife River have completed environmental assessments and cleanup on the property and received a notice of no further action from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. SHEDG has been completing its due diligence on the property at the same time, spending money and time trying to make sure it’s a property SHEDG would benefit from.
“There’s risk in taking on what I would term ‘dirty property,’ as far as contaminated property or past contaminated property,” Towry said. “There’s hoops we have to jump through to protect the city. One of those we talk about commonly is (a) Phase I, study.
A Phase 1 study, also called an environmental site assessment, identifies potential or existing environmental contamination liabilities on commercial properties.
“I did make contact with a company. I hope to get a proposal from them today,” Towry said Thursday, June 8. “It’s the same company that the county used, so ideally they have all their data at their fingertips.”
The Phase I study is only good for six months, Towry said.
“Once we have the study, we have to take ownership of the property,” he added.
Transportation to the property is another consideration.
“The big issue is access and how do we do that,” Towry said. “Part of the answer to that access issue is an entrance through 24th Street which goes through the Willamette property.”
That access and other “potential pitfalls” were discussed at the June 5 meeting, he said.
Oregon Department of Transportation was not represented at the meeting, but Towry said he hopes to involve them at the next meeting, which had yet to be scheduled as of June 8.
Nyquist made it clear county officials are looking for solutions.
“If you play this thing out and we went on for another three years of no activity and no action and the housing market cooks, we will regret that we didn’t pull the trigger,” he said. “That decision is not in the best interest of Sweet Home’s local economy.”