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The fact that several developers have pursued the former Blue Heron mill site, and then moved on, doesn’t bother Bill Shopoff. The president and CEO of The Shopoff Group, the latest bidder for the 23-acre industrial property in Oregon City, finds it encouraging.

“I’ve made a lot of money being the second, or third or fourth guy,” he said. “I can’t tell you if (our offer is) the right price. I can just tell you that it’s closer to the right price than the last two guys’ (offers).”

In mid-February, The Shopoff Group – a real estate investment company headquartered in Irvine, Calif., that focuses on large, complicated redevelopment projects – made a $2.8 million offer to purchase the site. The offer is approximately $2 million less than two posed last year, and just a fraction of the $20 million offered once by CenterCal Properties.

Political friction, financial issues and perceived risks associated with redevelopment doomed those deals. Shopoff doesn’t deny that such an endeavor can come with difficulties, but he likes challenges.

“We like to look for projects that have complicated issues, and we tend to think we take a somewhat intellectual approach to problem solving,” he said.

For instance, in Newport Beach, Calif., The Shopoff Group is redeveloping a 25-acre light-industrial site into mixed use, with up to 1,244 residential units (in mid- and high-rise buildings), 11,500 square feet of retail space and two acres of parks. Two existing computer chip manufacturers are scaling back amid gentrification.

The Shopoff Group acquired the site in 2010 for $23.5 million, and is preparing to break ground on the first 680-unit phase of development of Uptown Newport. That is expected to cost approximately $250 million; at full build-out, the project could cost close to $750 million. Bill Shopoff has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in capital for private projects over the past 25 years.

“So, this deal is in our wheelhouse,” he said of the Blue Heron site. “We just need to figure out what kind of product to do there.”

Shopoff has some initial ideas involving development of a mix of housing, retail and office space. He expects much of the site to need to be razed; however, he would like to preserve a couple of key buildings to tie the redevelopment to the site’s mill history.

Before Shopoff sets anything in stone, he plans to reach out to the community to understand stakeholders’ hopes for the prominent property at the foot of Willamette Falls. To that end, a led by Walker Macy is under way.

Shopoff is enthusiastic about those efforts, but isn’t committing to the endeavor just yet. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court-Oregon District won’t review the bankruptcy trustee’s recommendation to sell the property to The Shopoff Group until April 4; the company has until June 16 to close on the deal.

“I have some ideas, but before I put something on paper, I want to hear a little bit about what your town and community has to say about the site, and see if we can come up with something that fits our economic model and the community’s vision,” Shopoff said. “If we can do that, I think you’ll be happy to have us in your neighborhood, and if we don’t think we can do that, then we probably won’t be the guys.”

Kim Brandt, community development director for Newport Beach, said her city adopted a master plan for redevelopment of its industrial airport area (where The Shopoff Group’s project is set to begin) in 2006. Residential density was incorporated into the area’s zoning in an effort to attract developers and spur catalytic change. The Shopoff Group was the first company to step forward.

“Overall, they’ve been a very good group to work with,” Brandt said of The Shopoff Group.

“We’ve been very pleased with how cooperative they are. It’s a significant project for the city of Newport Beach in terms of the overall number of units … and it’s in an area of the city which is considered a gateway, so it’s a very important project.”

Oregon City stakeholders have similar ambitions for the former Blue Heron site, but Shopoff noted that a cheap entry price doesn’t necessarily ensure good value. Given the complications and costs associated with redevelopment, he said getting paid to take the Blue Heron site might even be too pricey.

A plus for the Oregon City site, however, is that it has none of the baggage inherent in the Newport Beach one – significant environmental and phasing restrictions associated with current tenants’ operations.

So, Shopoff is bullish about its offer. Time will tell if it has legs.

“We’re happy about where we think this price is relative to the opportunity,” he said. “But I can tell you that the land price is the price of admission in this deal. We’ll spend almost as much on design and engineering as we did on the land price.”