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To build the Portland-to-Milwaukie light-rail line, transit agency TriMet must move a nearly immovable object. The line will run through the center of what is now Beaver Heat Treating in north Milwaukie’s industrial area.

Transit-line expansions often force property owners to move. But relocation of this business, which treats metal equipment for clients including Ford and the U.S. military, is more problematic than most, said John Baker, real property acquisition manager for TriMet.

“We deal with stuff like this all the time,” Baker said. “But this is one of the most complicated ones I’ve ever seen.”

Beaver Heat Treating runs 26 furnaces in a 32,000-square-foot building east of Southeast McLoughlin Boulevard. Moving, or even cooling, those furnaces could damage them irreparably, said Tony Moran, the company’s vice president.

“The equipment we use in heat treating can’t be shut off,” Moran said. “We have to let it idle at temperature during the weekend.

“(TriMet is) trying to figure out, ‘How do you move a facility that’s never off?’ ” he said.

The answer, Moran said, is to set up a similar operation elsewhere, get it running, and only then shut down the existing plant. That could take $15 million to $23 million, Moran said.

No one wanted the new line to run through Beaver Heat Treating. The locally preferred alternative for the route, approved in 2003 and reaffirmed in 2008, would have shaved 6 feet off the company’s maintenance building, but otherwise left its operations intact.

The Union Pacific Railroad Co., whose line parallels the Portland-to-Milwaukie project through north Milwaukie, changed those plans, said Leah Robbins, the project’s director for the east segment.

Union Pacific had required that light-rail trains run no closer than 25 feet from its trains. Last year, in light of a recent accident in Colorado involving light-rail and heavy-rail trains, the railroad updated its requirements to increase the distance to 50 feet.

TriMet objected, saying that would cause the project to cut a wide gouge clear into downtown Milwaukie. “We strenuously showed them what the impact of that alignment would be,” Robbins said.

“It’s absolutely unacceptable to the project or the city of Milwaukie.”

Union Pacific officials agreed, except for a small area of north Milwaukie that gets higher-speed freight traffic and Amtrak trains. The alignment through the Beaver site is final, Robbins said.

“It’s very solid,” she said. “It’s not shifting anymore.”

Under federal law, TriMet must pay for Beaver Heat Treating to move to a new location. But there’s nothing simple about the move, Baker said.

The company’s tile-lined furnaces could break if they cool down. “You can’t tell a property owner, ‘Sorry you had to move and they all broke,'” Baker said. “That’s not fair.”

TriMet officials are appraising the Beaver property and haven’t started negotiating with the company, Baker said. One question will be whether the move will require some downtime.

Beaver Heat Treating’s contracts require it to provide products continuously or face steep fines. Going off-line, even for a month, could put the company out of business, Moran said.

Without the winches Beaver Heat Treating supplies for its F-150 and F-250 pickups, Ford would have to shut down its assembly line, Moran said. Beaver could get fined $25,000 for every minute that happens.

“If your assembly line is down, that’s 1,200 people not working today and standing there because you’re not going to supply their product,” he said.

A second-generation family business, Beaver Heat Treating has operated on the same site since 1955, Moran said. The zoning and permitting for the type of business will probably make finding a new site difficult, he said, but he doesn’t mind relocating.

“Our business can produce what it does anywhere, as long as it’s in the general location. But can they move us without interrupting customer service?” Moran said. That’s why he would want a new site running before the old one closes.

“We didn’t ask to be relocated,” he said. “We’re not asking to be rebuilt any better than we already are, but we don’t want to take any less than what we already have.

“The property and building are immaterial, but if our equipment is jeopardized because of the move, we could easily go out of business,” Moran said. “You’d have 40-some people unemployed due to a mass transit issue.”