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Plans are moving forward to redevelop a 138-acre former golf course in North Portland into a mix of industrial space and open space.

Project owners applied to the Bureau of Development Services for a commercial building permit to start work on a two-building industrial park.

鈥淭he two buildings will feature 36-foot ceiling heights, which will be the tallest among available industrial buildings in Northeast Portland,鈥� said Stuart Skaug, vice president at CBRE, the company leasing space in the buildings. 鈥淭here are no walls or anything up yet, but they’re out there turning dirt.鈥�

Skaug said crews are performing grading work and other site improvements. When completed in the first quarter of 2016, the 47-acre Colwood Industrial Park will offer 844,000 square feet of industrial space in two buildings 鈥� one with 425,000 square feet, the other with 419,000 square feet 鈥� that can be split into 200,000-square-foot spaces for individual tenants.

鈥�(This project is) truly infill development helping add to Portland’s industrial land base and bring jobs to Northeast Portland,鈥� Skaug said.

The industrial park will be located at the north end of the property, with 85 acres to the south dedicated as open space in the neighborhood.

Portland City Council in 2014 approved a deal to buy the land for $5 million from the Trust for Public Land. Portland Parks & Recreation and the Bureau of Environmental Services will share property management duties. The land purchased by the city includes a nine-hole golf course, open space, wetlands and forested areas.

Portland Parks & Recreation spokesman Mark Ross said contractors for the open space project have begun restoring trees and shrubs, and have nearly completed the excavation required to create a wetlands area on the east side of Alderwood Road.

Ross said habitat restoration will take at least five years and that the parks department plans to increase efforts to mitigate negative impacts from people allowing their dogs on the property.

鈥淲e are looking into getting some access barriers and (are) continuing messaging efforts to educate people that this area is under restoration and is not open to dogs, on or off-leash,鈥� Ross said. 鈥淚t’s gratifying to revamp the Colwood Golf Center and to manage more than one-third of the restored land as natural area, protecting wildlife and water quality, creating a rare opportunity for Portlanders to access nature in the heart of the city.鈥�

Residents of the Cully neighborhood, where the land is located, have been pushing for many years to get more open park space. The golf course’s owners in 2005 first expressed interest in rezoning the land for industrial use and selling it, but encountered pushback from neighborhood residents opposed to the idea. In October 2013, Portland City Council approved a plan that rezoned the north portion for industrial use while retaining the land to the south as open park space.

The Colwood National Golf Course in June 2014 closed after 83 years in business. Prior to its development around 1930, the land was used for agriculture. The northern portion of the property 鈥� where the industrial park will go 鈥� drains into McBride Slough. A sediment analysis of McBride Slough by the Department of Environmental Quality detected high levels of copper, cadmium, polychlorinated biphenyls and other potentially carcinogenic compounds.

The DEQ and Colwood Industrial Park owners entered into a Prospective Purchaser Agreement to clean the site and ensure that the new owners will not be held responsible for pre-existing contamination.

The terms of the agreement, entered into by both parties in October 2014, required the owners to pay the DEQ $60,000 鈥渇or investigation and removal and remedial actions in the Columbia Slough,鈥� according to information provided by Cheyenne Chapman, a DEQ legal policy analyst.

鈥淭he PPA helped the new owners move forward with this development,鈥� she said. 鈥淭he owners worked closely with the project manager and paid into the remedial action fund to clean up the site for development.鈥�