The path toward planning the Blue Heron mill site in Oregon City comes through Portland Thursday, as the Metro Council is set for a briefing on the site's master planning process.
The briefing comes as Oregon City is set to launch its process for master planning the site, a key step before the former paper mill can be rezoned for a use other than heavy industrial. It also comes a week after the Oregon Legislature earmarked a conditional $5 million to clean up the property and make it ready for redevelopment.
The conversation, said Metro Sustainability Center director Jim Desmond, is to gather feedback from the Metro Council on what they envision at the Willamette Falls site and what's important to them.
Desmond said the planning team is asking the Metro Council, "What would success look like here?"
The public is also involved in the process, with a new website and a survey to gauge opinion and provide information about the project.
It's been a whirlwind month for the site, adjacent to North America's second highest-volume waterfall and managed, at the moment, by a trustee for a federal bankruptcy court. The site's previous owner, the Blue Heron paper company, filed for bankruptcy in 2011, and Metro, Oregon City, the state and other partners have been studying the site for its redevelopment potential more or less since then.
In June, a California-based company, Eclipse Development Group, put a $4.1 million bid on the property, with the deal set to close next month.
But Desmond said that doesn't change the government partners' plans to work on the site's master plan. He said the site's trustee has signed an agreement, transferrable to a potential new owner, that the buyer would be involved in the master planning process going forward.
"The most important step (of the process) is to submit a land use application at the end of the process to rezone the property," Desmond said. "Only a landowner can make that application, so the trustee has agreed that any buyer of the property – whether it's the one currently in the conversation or a future one – would need to step into that."
At the end of the day, the Oregon City Commission will decide on the site's zoning.
That process is Oregon City's, although Metro is involved as a stakeholder. The Walker Macy consulting firm is managing the process, with public involvement help from Cogan Owens Cogan.
That process will help the project's partners finalize a development plan and financial plan to submit to Gov. John Kitzhaber, two of the conditions for receipt of the $5 million allocated for the project. The $5 million comes from bonds on lottery sales, set to be issued in 2015.
"It's to be used to prepare the site for redevelopment, to begin to prepare some needed infrastructure," Desmond said. "It's really to clean up the property in the broadest sense of the word. There's a lot of superfluous stuff there that is not really part of the future of the property. We want to get as much as that done as possible, so new investment can begin."
But the planning has to take place first, which is why the Metro Council is being briefed on Oregon City's project on Thursday.
"The master plan calls for the land use application to be submitted in April 2014," Desmond said. "We're on a pretty fast track here."
Note: An earlier version of this story had an incorrect year for Blue Heron's bankruptcy filing. Blue Heron filed in 2011. This version has been corrected.