Scott Swanson
The Sweet Home Economic Development Group unveiled some preliminary plans for the former Knife River property, which Linn County is in the process of donating to SHEDG, in a public meeting Thursday, June 23, held at Sunshine Industries.
The purpose of the meeting, SHEDG Chair Rachel Kittson-Maqatish said, was to inform the 40-some people in attendance and gauge their interest in the project.
The SHEDG board has been considering accepting an offer by Linn County to take possession of the 200-plus-acre parcel of land, once owned by Knife River and, more recently by the Western States Land Reliance Trust. The property was foreclosed by the county for nonpayment of taxes at the end of 2010.
County and SHEDG officials have discussed developing the property as a park, possibly including permanent facilities for the annual Oregon Jamboree country music and camping festival, which is owned and operated by SHEDG as a fund-raising event to support local economic development activities.
The SHEDG board asked the county Board of Commissioners for the land in January of 2015. Since then, SHEDG members have worked with county officials on environmental and legal issues pertaining to the property transfer and have begun formulating plans for the property.
Thursday’s meeting was another step in that process: to get public input on the project.
“We need to know that this is something you want,” Kittson-Maqatish said. “What I’ve said is we’re not taking that property if I have to take my lawn mower down there and mow the lawn. This has to be a community project, with community buy-in.”
She emphasized that SHEDG wants to hear how people truly feel.
“If you say this is not something we should be doing, or I don’t want to be involved, let us know that as well.
“If we do it, we owe it to ourselves and our community to have a conversation in a manner that furthers our identity, who we are and how we work together.
The majority of the meeting was dedicated to a description of the property and its potential uses by Joe Graybill, chair of SHEDG’s Property Committee, who is also an engineer with the City of Sweet Home.
Kittson-Maqatish told the audience that Graybill has worked on the project for about two years, and “sleeps and dreams” about it.
Graybill displayed maps showing the property’s initial status and the ideas he has come up with over the course of working with the Property Committee members and brainstorming about what could be done with it. Graybill said he’s “lost track” of the number of versions the planning map has gone through.
He noted that development of the park would likely need to be done in phases, as funding becomes available.
He said the property, which is bordered on the east by private properties just west of Clark Mill Road, by the river on the north, on the west by the Weyerhaeuser Mill property and by private property on the south, totals 225 acres, but only about 120 of that is actually usable land. The rest is ponds and other waterways, wetlands and an eagle’s nest protection area.
Graybill described various features on the maps, detailing where potential roads, trails, bridges, camping facilities, an athletic field complex, and an outdoor stage facility could be located.
He emphasized that a Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance staging area for river rescues that currently exists near the northernmost portion of the property would stay there and, consequently, there will likely be no other marine craft access to the river, since Sweet Home already has two boat ramps – at Wiley Park and just west of the Pleasant Valley Bridge.
The property is relatively flat, with the exception of some quarry leftovers – a “very large hill of pea gravel” and a few other smaller rises. The original riverbed ran through the middle of the property in the 1930s and 40s, creating some of the wetlands that remain. The current riverbed is the result of flooding in those years, before the dams were built, Graybill said.
Several large ponds along the river occupy nearly half the property.
Graybill said prospective baseball fields would be larger than those at Roy Johnston Field behind Hawthorne School, the new ones featuring fences at 250 or 300 feet, which would be large enough to host upper-level tournaments. The fields could also be used for soccer or football, he said.
Challenges include developing adequate road access to the park and providing utilities – particularly sewer connections – for the park, which in some areas may require pump stations or some other solution, such as drainfields, because ground levels are below the city sewer system.
Access would most likely be from 23rd and 24th avenues and Clark Mill Road, but he agreed with a resident of Clark Mill that the road is narrow.
For campground use, he said, “you could probably get in and out of Clark Mill fairly easily.” An extension of Tamarack across the Weyerhaeuser Mill property could intersect with 23rd and 24th, he noted.
“But that’s all very hypothetical at this point,” he said. “Whatever happens with the mill property, street connectivity would be required.”
Resident Bill Davis pointed out that there is no east-west through access north of Main Street and that only Long Street provides such to the south, other than Highway 20. He asked whether Green River Drive could be used for access.
“We have a city that’s nearly five miles long and only two east-west streets,” Graybill agreed. He said he’s come up with possible solutions, but “they’re a long time coming and I don’t want to presume on other people’s properties.”
Sharon Kanareff, coordinator of the South Santiam All Lands Collaborative, which is working to establish a trail between Sweet Home and the Willamette National Forest, said that the proposed park would make an ideal western terminus for the trail, which would parallel the South Santiam River.
Angela Clegg, watershed education coordinator for the South Santiam Watershed Council, told how she has already taken students onto the proposed park property to learn about watershed, birds, wildlife and marine plants and animals currently present in the area.
She predicted that students will be able to learn while helping to develop the park.
“Kids will get to help form what this will be,” she said, adding that “teaching kids what stakeholders are is really exciting for us.”
Kittson-Maqatish noted that Cheadle Lake Park in Lebanon, which is owned and operated by the Lebanon Community Foundation, has taken “years” to develop, with many challenges.
“If you want SHEDG to take this, you need to invest – time or whatever,” she told the crowd.