Benny Westcott
At their April 5 meeting, the Linn County Commissioners voted to complete the transfer of ownership of about three acres of former Willamette Industries mill property in Sweet Home to the Lebanon-based Family Assistance and Resource Center (FAC). FAC plans to develop a “community outreach and resource center” for homeless persons at the site, located east of Bi-Mart.
“Linn County is very happy to support the request of the City Council of Sweet Home to help with the homeless shelter,” County Commissioner Will Tucker said.
“We have a lot of confidence in FAC. From what little work we’ve done with them, they’ve shown themselves to be a pretty good group of people. The organization is well-led, and we’re hoping that they do great work with Sweet Home to reduce the impact of homelessness in the community.”
The transfer of the land out of county hands had previously been delayed because of environmental concerns, Tucker explained.
“The process of transferring the property was a little bit difficult because even though the property itself didn’t have a lot of manufacturing or fuel tanks, it was surrounded by things that did.
There were issues and concerns from both the old mill site and the old Wimer Trucking site (currently the city’s Public Works Department headquarters), where there had been a leaking fuel tank. There’s concerns there about possible environmental contamination.”
But he said that testing paid for by Linn County showed that contamination was at a safe threshold, although out of an “abundance of safety” an environmental firm recommended laying down a layer of fresh gravel on top of what’s already at the site to “cover up what might have been airborne over the years and been on top of the ground,” Tucker said.
He said the fresh gravel could also serve to get some more distance between people and contents that may have seeped up from some tanks that used to leak at Wimer.
“The plan is to make it very safe, and that is being taken into consideration by FAC,” he said.
He said the county was at first trying to donate the property to the city of Sweet Home before donating it to FAC, but the city didn’t take it, which caused the county to change its plans and give the land to FAC.
“In my mind it wasn’t the perfect solution. I think the city should have taken ownership,” Tucker said. “But that was the city’s choice, and they chose not to. And we thought it was too important to not support FAC and the request of the full City Council to make something work.”
Some city councilors had previously been opposed to accepting the land from Linn County out of concerns that the city would be liable for potential unknown environmental clean-up costs on the property.
FAC now owns the land with the requirement that the organization do things for the public good with that land, less it be returned to the county, Tucker said.