Walking through the former Blue Heron Paper Company mill on the way to Willamette Falls, it's hard not to be overcome with an overwhelming sense of opportunity and challenge.
The mill is a hodgepodge of centuries of once-productive equipment now rendered into industrial waste, idled mills left to salvagers hoping to make money off the metal the stuff is shaped from.
From Main Street in Oregon City, it looks flat enough, but much of the Blue Heron site is built on fill and pilings, like an erector set built upon the Willamette River and its banks.
But when visitors emerge from the mill's east end and come face-to-face with North America's second highest-volume waterfall, the challenge is swept away. Willamette Falls forces visitors to think about what could be, to put away the colossal brownfield left behind.
Metro has been looking at the site for about a year, shortly after the Blue Heron Paper Company mill shuttered amidst bankruptcy proceedings. The regional government could use money from its 2006 natural areas bond measure to buy the site, if it can reach an agreement with a bankruptcy court on the price.
"We're not going to be able to give the council an easy choice," said Metro Councilor Carlotta Collette, whose district includes Oregon City. She has been one of the biggest proponents of Metro's study of whether to try to buy the site.
The region isn't jumping headfirst into purchasing the site near Willamette Falls, in part because of the daunting prospect of cleanup. Not only is the site full of equipment that is slowly being removed, but nobody yet knows how much (if any) toxic waste has leached into the ground and into the Willamette after more than 170 years of industrial operations.
"We're engaged in a very thorough due diligence process," said Jim Desmond, director of Metro's Sustainability Center, which oversees the natural areas bond money. "This is a highly complex site. It presents issues that are far different from most natural areas that we would acquire."
The Blue Heron Paper Company site is stuffed with old equipment from decades of paper production.
If Metro were to acquire the site, it would then partner with Oregon City, Clackamas County, the state and tribal representatives with the goal of restoring the area as a living part of Oregon City's downtown core.
"We envision this site, if it's done correctly, could produce a great many jobs for local residents," said Oregon City city manager David Frasher. "Probably some rezoning that would require mixed use and vertical housing and corporate office space and shops."
To some extent, that's the way the site used to be. Historic photographs show an area that looks more like a bustling 19th century downtown than the stale, grey factory passersby see today.
Within the plant, historic streets still are generally cleared of buildings – Main Street extends through the middle of the site, and Third and Fourth streets branch off through the plant toward the river.
There's precedent for this kind of redevelopment. Collette is in Minneapolis this week, and one of her stops was that city's Mill District, where abandoned mills once powered by falls on the Mississippi River now house condos, offices, stores and restaurants.
Of course, Oregon City is not Minneapolis. The Portland region's big industrial-to-livable space conversion project, the Pearl District, succeeded in part because of its proximity to jobs and transit.
There's a bus connection and an ad hoc commuter rail line to downtown Oregon City; there's not much more to support a community that isn't reliant on cars.
"Even if we solve all those other problems and make it the most outstanding, incredible place – which I firmly believe we can – there is still this question of how do you get people there," Collette said. "How much investment can it attract and pay for?"
That investment is key to making the site work. Standing inside one historic building that local leaders said could be redeveloped, Desmond said the restoration of the properties on the site is envisioned as a private sector effort.
"There would be private sector people leading that," Desmond said. "There's certainly a lot of people, not only locally but across the country – we think this would attract international interest from a design and look at the potential point of view. It's not something the public sector should lead."
Wayne De Vore worked at Blue Heron Paper Company before its 2011 bankruptcy and closure; he is one of two former employees still on staff as part of a maintenance crew. He said the mill behind him is about 90 years old.
Not everyone wants to see Blue Heron become a southern Pearl District. Wayne De Vore, a former Blue Heron plumber who is one of two former employees to still work at the site, said he would like to see the area remain an industrial site.
"I'm not a fan of minimum wage jobs," he said. "Service industry jobs may employ thousands of people but if they're not making any money, it won't make any difference."
But those concepts for an extended downtown are, for now, just concepts – visions coming forth from the mist pouring off Willamette Falls but tempered with the reality of the 22-acre site.
Metro Council President Tom Hughes has toured the site, and said it's daunting.
"It's hard to imagine what it would be like if most of that were cleared away," he said. "But the other side of that – you get to where you're up against the falls and it's incredible. You say, 'Maybe it's worth all the trouble to get here.'"