A 205,100-square-foot industrial and manufacturing facility in Wilsonville has sold for $31 million.

The facility, located at 26440 S.W. Parkway Ave., was sold to dental equipment manufacturer DCI International of Newberg. Clackamas County property records list ESS Tech Inc. as the seller.

Newmark Real Estate, headquartered in New York, arranged the sale of the facility. Managing director Mark Hush and associate director Jack Ward represented the buyer.

With the acquisition, DCI plans to consolidate regional operations spread across multiple facilities into a single, larger manufacturing hub that will double as its new headquarters, a Newmark press release states.

“DCI’s purchase and future relocation is a great example of companies making long-term commitments to the Portland region when the right opportunity becomes available,” Hush stated in the press release. “Large industrial buildings available for purchase are exceptionally scarce, and the landscape becomes even smaller when a user needs to remain near its existing workforce. This property checked all the critical boxes — location, scale, operational efficiency and room for future expansion — making it an ideal solution for DCI’s next phase of growth.”

Located within the Parkway Woods Business Park along Interstate 5, the 24.8-acre property features warehouse and manufacturing space, office and laboratory components, several dock-high loading positions, ample parking and trailer storage.

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Affordable housing and Lake Oswego might seem to be a contradiction in terms, but in one of Oregon’s most expensive and exclusive suburbs, officials broke ground Wednesday on a small apartment project dedicated to providing units at below-market rates.

A few dozen dignitaries and industry officials busted out ceremonial golden shovels for El Nido, a 55-unit development on Boones Ferry Road near Lake Oswego’s Lake Grove neighborhood.

The $32 million project is Lake Oswego’s second affordable housing project funded by Metro bonds. The first, Mercy Greenbrae at Marylhurst Commons, was completed with 100 units in May 2024.

“I’m very pleased that this project is in Lake Oswego,” Clackamas County Commissioner Ben West said. “Affordable housing sites should be distributed throughout the county.”

Metro purchased the site in 2023 from the city of Lake Oswego for $2.3 million. Before that, the parcel had long served as construction staging for the Boones Ferry Road project, Lake Oswego Mayor Joe Buck said.

Using the land for affordable housing is “life changing, and it’s the most impactful thing we could do,” he said.

Construction commenced after developer Hacienda Community Development Corp. successfully legally challenged a decades-old 25-foot setback requirement from an adjacent road that severely constrained the site’s buildable area.

“I thought, we’re going to be left with a dining room table in the middle,” joked Ernesto Fonseca, chief executive of Hacienda CDC. “Clearly, that’s not going to work.”

The building will outlive today’s troubled times, he said, noting “so much persecution of minorities in this country.”

“This will pass,” Fonseca said, while the building will continue to provide affordable housing well into the future. “This will be here for a long, long time ahead.”

El Nido’s design team is a partnership of Mackenzie and Access Architecture. Colas Construction is serving as general contractor alongside subcontractors including J.A. Mechanical and SOS Exterior Remodeling.

Andrew Colas, CEO of Colas Construction, recalled that Hacienda CDC first hired the Black-owned contractor in the late 1990s. Hacienda took a chance on Colas Construction for a project with two six-unit buildings when Colas had not yet tackled a project that large, he said.

“There was always an RFP written that said you shouldn’t try,” Colas said, referring to a request for proposals.

Colas said he had worked with the subcontractors on increasing their capacity to take on bigger jobs, including co-signing for a line of credit in one case.

El Nido — Spanish for “The Nest” — is part of Metro‘s drive to build thousands of affordable housing units funded by the $652.8 million regional housing bond passed by voters in 2018. The regional government is on track to build 5,600 affordable housing units, well above the initial goal of 3,900 homes, Metro Councilor Christine Lewis said.

“We’re overdelivering,” she said Wednesday. “We’re killing it.”

Ten units at El Nido will provide permanent supportive housing with services for residents. One apartment, to be used by the property manager, is not a regulated affordable unit, leaving El Nido with 54 affordable units.

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Oregon State Sen. Mark Meek said that he is open to Gov. Tina Kotek recalling the Legislature for a special session on transportation funding — if the governor agrees to repeal a tolling law.

“I’m open to that,” he said. “I told the governor, I committed that if the final package looks good, I’m happy to be there. But one of my requests is to repeal ORS 383.150.”

The tolling statute, on the books since 2017, directs the Oregon Transportation Commission to establish a toll program and assess potential tolls on interstates 5 and 205. Plans by the Oregon Department of Transportation to pay for roads and bridges with tolling has foundered amid political opposition and planning obstacles.

Meek’s comments, in a brief interview on Sunday, come amid speculation that Kotek will reconvene the Legislature in a special session to tackle transportation funding. The regular session ended June 27 in acrimony after a major transportation bill ran out of gas.

Kotek’s office did not specifically respond to Meek’s comments. “The governor is assessing next steps,” a spokesperson said Monday.

Meek said he’s been in discussions with Kotek and other state leaders since the session ended without a transportation funding package.

“I’ve had several communications with the governor and her staff, and we are working on a special session to try to keep our ODOT workers out in the field, maintain the roads for Oregonians and then also make sure that we can rebalance HCAS,” Meek said, referring to the state Highway Cost Allocation Study.

The biannual study, conducted most recently by ECONorthwest for the state Office of Economic Analysis, helps lawmakers determine how to spend transportation funds. It has played a role in the heated debate in Salem about who benefits from and who pays for transportation levies, including the gas tax, weight-mile tax and vehicle registration fees, and how that should be divided between the trucking industry and regular commuters.

Meek, D-Gladstone, has fought tolls in the Legislature. Meek’s Clackamas County constituents have been in an uproar over potential tolls on the Abernethy Bridge, the I-205 span connecting West Linn and Oregon City.

Meek said his constituents should not bear the brunt of Oregon’s tolling program. He said the tolling law is “so harmful and damaging to my community in Clackamas County.”

Meek called for “an honest discussion about what tolling looks like here in Oregon, or at least in my community.”

The bridge is undergoing a major project to strengthen it in case of an earthquake, and to widen the roadway to increase capacity. The project is expected to be complete next year.

The Legislature adjourned without passing House Bill 2025, a wide-ranging transportation funding bill. Meek was removed from the Joint Transportation Reinvestment Committee by Senate leaders after he said he would not support the bill.

Republicans and some Democrats were leery of the numerous revenue-raising provisions in the bill, including raising the 40-cent gas tax by 15 cents, indexing it to inflation, and hiking vehicle registration fees.

Supporters argued that the state must complete a series of major transportation projects, including the Interstate 5 Rose Quarter expansion, which would also create highway covers to repair the street grid in Portland’s Albina neighborhood, and fund regular road maintenance.

After lawmakers went home, ODOT laid off at least 483 workers and began canceling minor road projects around the state.

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Project name: Linwood Corridor Improvements

Location: Milwaukie

Completion: April 2024

Cost: $10.8 million

Owners: Clackamas County, City of Milwaukie

Engineer: Harper Houf Peterson Righellis

General Contractors: D&D Concrete and Utilities, MEI Group

Submitting Company: Harper Houf Peterson Righellis

Other Associates/Key Consultants: Archaeological Investigations NW, DKS Associates, Epic Land Solutions, GeoDesign (NV5)

Subcontractors: D&D Concrete and Utilities: NAL Landscaping, Prairie Electric, S2 Contractors. Subcontractors: MEI Group: A+ Flagging, Aaken, American Concrete, Andres Landscape, Arck Construction, Auden Construction, Brothers Concrete Cutting, C&C Flagging, Carlson Testing, Coral Construction, Curtis Heintz Excavating, Cutter Construction, D&D Concrete and Utilities, Drain-Pro, Hicks Striping & Curving, Iron Horse, Mountain View Tree Services, KeyWest Retaining Systems, Knifer River, Vancouver Paving, West Coast Soil Solutions, Willamette Fence Co.

The Linwood Avenue Corridor Improvements project, completed through collaboration between the City of Milwaukie and Clackamas County Development Agency, has revitalized a critical two-mile stretch of Southeast Linwood Avenue from Southeast Harmony Road to Southeast Johnson Creek Boulevard. Harper Houf Peterson Righellis led engineering efforts, with D&D Concrete & Utilities and MEI Group leading construction.

Prior to construction, Linwood Avenue was a typical minor arterial roadway that was built more than 50 years ago. The roadway was elevated higher than adjacent properties, with years of overlays and numerous utilities strewn throughout the corridor. Four separate water districts had facilities within the roadway – some abandoned and some cross connected as the area transitioned boundaries throughout the years. Because of this, lowering the roadway was not an option.

Within this two-mile stretch of roadway, 17 intersections and 146 driveways access Linwood Avenue. Extensive right-of-way coordination and acquisition was required with each and every property owner impacted by the widening.

A key feature of the project includes a new dedicated pedestrian bridge spanning Johnson Creek, installed as a cost-efficient alternative to modifying the existing vehicular bridge. The project also upgraded traffic signals at key intersections and added rectangular rapid-flashing beacon crossings near Linwood Elementary School.

The improvements serve multiple elementary schools in the area, including Linwood, Seth Lewelling, Wichita, and Lot Whitcomb, while connecting residential neighborhoods to the popular Springwater Corridor Trail.

Engineers developed an innovative street design that combined bicycle lanes with sidewalks into shared-use facilities, reducing the overall width by 4 feet and saving approximately $500,000 in right-of-way and construction costs.

The project incorporated significant environmental benefits, decreasing impervious surface area by about 0.66 acres through pervious cycle tracks, sidewalks and landscaping. Stormwater planters with specialized media now remove sediment and treat roadway runoff, improving water quality in the Johnson Creek Basin.

Construction proceeded in three carefully planned stages to keep the arterial open throughout the project, with only a single day’s closure required to set the pedestrian bridge in place.

In early 2025, Clackamas County will construct the Monroe Street Greenway east of Southeast Linwood Avenue, while Milwaukie designs improvements west of Linwood, further expanding the region’s active transportation network.

The completed corridor represents a Tier 1 High Priority Project identified in the Clackamas County Transportation System Plan and was delivered on schedule and within budget despite challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic.

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A new 15,362-square-foot library is on track to be built in the Oak Lodge service area. The project will begin construction this fall.

The new Oak Lodge Library will be on property owned by North Clackamas Parks and Recreation District (NCPRD) at 3811 SE Concord Road in Milwaukie, the home of the historic Concord Elementary School.

The project is part of the Oak Lodge & Gladstone Community Project and includes the renovation of the former Concord Elementary School into a community center. A park is also planned for the site. The entire site is owned by NCPRD.

“The county and NCPRD are working together to coordinate planning and construction efforts, where possible, to increase efficiency and save money,” Clackamas County Project Manager Jason Varga stated in an email.

The county will purchase the land for the library from NCPRD for about $370,000 per acre. The library covers about 0.5 acres. The final purchase price and sale date are not yet determined.

A few miles away, Clackamas County is also building the Gladstone Library, which broke ground in late June. The 6,000-square-foot library is expected to be completed next summer. The new Gladstone Library will be at 525 Portland Ave. in Gladstone. The former Gladstone City Hall, located on the site, was demolished last year.

The two libraries will be jointly operated to provide consistent services to all residents.

Opsis Architecture, along with Johnston Architects, designed the Oak Lodge Library for the county. P&C Construction is the contractor.

The library will include three study rooms, a community meeting room, a history room/conference room, children’s area, teen area, staff area, Friends of the Library space, seed library and computer workstations.

The total project cost of the library is $21.5 million. Funding sources include the Library District Revenue retained funds reserves, county ARPA funds, state ARPA funds and $5.7 million in budgeted County General Fund.

Construction is scheduled to begin in September, with a groundbreaking on Sept. 16, and be complete in December 2024.

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Construction has started on a replacement courthouse for Clackamas County. A ground-breaking ceremony was held Feb. 3.

The original courthouse in downtown Oregon City, built in 1936, is functionally obsolete and can no longer serve the needs of residents, the county stated in a press release. The building also has safety concerns and structural risks. Soil tests revealed the ground under the building, near the Willamette River, could liquefy during an earthquake, the county stated.

No plans exist for the current courthouse, according to the city of Oregon City, but redevelopment is one of the priorities in the Urban Renewal Plan for downtown.

The new courthouse’s location on the 68-acre Red Soils Campus in Oregon City will provide easy access to county resources such as social services, public health, veterans services, and others. The courthouse will stand at 1000 Courthouse Road.

Clackamas Progress Partners, previously named Fengate PCL Progress Partners, was selected to design, build, and maintain the replacement courthouse over a 30-year period. The consortium of companies is comprised of developer Fengate Asset Management, PCL Investments, design-build contractor PCL Construction Services, service provider Honeywell and designer DLR Group.

The partnership was a result of the county’s analyses of alternatives that led to the most cost-effective, lowest risk option. Clackamas County and Clackamas Progress Partners entered a contract for public-private partnership for construction. This project will mark the first time in Oregon state history that a courthouse is delivered through a public-private partnership, the county said.

The 215,000-square-foot courthouse will hold 14 courtrooms, 20 judicial chambers, offices for the district attorney, secure loading and staging areas, improved prisoner transfer facilities, jury assembly and grand jury spaces, safe corridors for courthouse users and secure holding cells for violent offenders.

The design takes a forward-thinking approach to operations, security, technology and sustainability, according to Clackamas Progressive Partners. The interior design vision emerged from consideration of wayfinding, operational clarity, user wellness and trauma-informed design. There will be an abundance of daylight with uninterrupted views of the outdoors.

Brick will be the primary exterior material for all elevations of the building.

The project team is participating in the Oregon Green Energy Technology in Public Buildings program. Systems able to produce at least 25 percent of the building’s energy will be on-site, the city stated. Mass timber will also be used in the building.

The total project cost is currently estimated at $313 million. Construction is scheduled for completion in May 2025.

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Oregon State University in recent years has played a major role in promoting the growth of mass timber in the Pacific Northwest. Now the university is doing so via its own 22,000-square-foot facility in Oregon City.

Designed by Soderstrom Architects, the new Extension Service Education Center will feature an array of mass-timber elements.

“It all comes from them,” said Michael Shea, a Soderstrom Architects principal. “They wanted a Cascadian sort of Northwest design … like Timberline Lodge, so it’s very reminiscent of Timberline. Years ago we did some remodeling there, so we do have some expertise. The idea is that it’s a wood-framed, heavy-timber building with glulam columns and beams; they wanted to highlight wood products of the region.”

Clackamas County commissioners approved project plans in October 2019. The new building will be located on the southeast corner of the intersection of Beavercreek Road and Warner Milne Road – about two blocks east of OSU‘s existing Extension Service office on Clackamas County’s Red Soils campus.

Both cross-laminated timber and mass plywood manufactured by Freres Lumber Co. of Mill City will be used. The building will include a 150-seat meeting and training room, multiple smaller meeting rooms and even a kitchen to accommodate cooking and nutrition education.

“The second floor is all office space, like a big day-lit bar,” Shea said. “It’s a big hall with cubicles and little boxes, and everyone will get to see the nice-looking CLT up at the roof. The daylight is really quite spectacular too. There are large windows and some hidden clerestories that you can’t see from the street.”

Plus, the building is designed to achieve net-zero energy use by producing more energy than it consumes.

“The roof uses insulated metal panels to get the high R (insulation) value, and that’s mostly tempered with (photovoltaic) panels,” Shea said. “And then the mechanical systems are pretty much state of the art, while the PVs make up the difference.”

Instead of exposed mechanical systems typical of recent CLT designs, the new building will have an 18-inch-tall access space between the first and second stories. This will hide HVAC, electrical, plumbing, data and other systems.

“It’s nice to see the wood, but it would be great to see the wood without all that stuff in the way,” Shea said. “It should work out well visually and acoustically.”

Heating, cooling and ventilation are separated. Heated and chilled water will come from Clackamas County’s central plant serving its Red Soils campus.

“We’re supplying 100 percent fresh, outdoor air,” Shea said. “There’s no recycled air. On the design side we know the dedicated outdoor air systems are healthier, and that’s part of the whole sustainability story of the building. It’s not something the Extension service was particularly interested in but I’m sure they appreciate it now.”

Also, the building will be constructed to Level 4 seismic resiliency so that it can serve Clackamas County officials as an emergency operations center.

Gardening education will take place within the building. A “Master Gardener Clinic” will be open to the public.

“The ground floor is where the Extension Service has its public service counter and suite for master gardeners,” Shea said. “It was interesting designing for them. They said ‘Our finishes have to be sturdy; people are going to be bringing in muddy, wet plants.’ They also have a lot of programs for the public and school kids, and they have a suite of offices there for that.”

Construction is expected to begin in June, Shea said. P&C Construction is set to serve as the general contractor.

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A new development in Oregon City will provide affordable housing for military veterans struggling with low-wage employment and even homelessness.

Known for now as Pleasant Avenue Veterans Housing – it will be named after a local service member upon completion – the building will provide 24 apartments for persons with incomes at or below 30 percent of the median family income. Northwest Housing Alternatives, a nonprofit, is developing the project for the Clackamas County Housing Authority. The two-story building was designed by KASA Architects and is being built by general contractor Walsh Construction.

“It’s open to veterans from all over; they’re not restricted to Clackamas County,” Clackamas County Housing Development Coordinator Angel Sully said. “The county has a long-standing relationship with NHA, so when we were approached by them and their former director it just seemed like a good fit; it just checked all the boxes we needed.”

The building will hold 12 one-bedroom units, eight two-bedroom units and four studios.

Crews broke ground in mid-January and currently are nearing completion of wood-framed interior and exterior walls and roofing. Mechanical, electrical and plumbing work is just getting started.

“We’re right at the tail end of framing, and in the next couple of days we’ll have the roof sheathing all done,” Walsh Construction superintendent Bryan Ware said. “The roofing and siding will start next week, and with windows there will be a very quick transformation. But right now the project is tracking really well. We’ve gotten some lucky breaks with the trades.”

The project is one of the first for Walsh using its new Cost Efficient Design Construction methodology, which seeks to minimize construction time and cost through design and material efficiency. Here, those efficiencies are being realized both through the use of panelized exterior and interior wall systems, as well as a design that avoids complex angles and shapes.

“The entire project is prefabbed and panelized,” Walsh Construction project manager Brandi Pine said. “It’s got the two-foot spacing, which is not totally common on a wood-framed structure. The entire project was panelized, and it took us two weeks to stand all the walls and then it’s been another week and a half to do the roof; so it’s been extremely fast framing.”

The wall panels are manufactured by Pacific Wall Systems, which has plants in Central Point and Tumwater, Washington. The wall systems come in a wide variety of configurations ranging from bare studs to nearly complete walls with drywall, window openings, weather barrier, and plumbing and electric fixtures.

In this case, Walsh chose to use exterior wall panels sheathed with DensGlass weather barrier. The interior consists of basic stud walls, some of which have plywood sheathing.

The biggest advantages are the time saved and the need for fewer on-site carpenters.

“It’s definitely faster when you panelize, regardless of how many people you have,” Pine said. “There are not a lot of wood framers too, so this was the perfect storm in terms of a lull in the workload. Being panelized, they were able to stand almost half a floor in a day.”

For context, the entire building consists of 18,000 square feet of floor area over two stories. That kind of time savings means completion will be reached in less than a year; tenants are expected to begin moving in at some point after Thanksgiving.

“This is the second veteran project that NHA has done,” Northwest Housing Alternatives’ Nikolai Ursin said. “The first was Pomeroy Place, which was opened a couple of years ago in unincorporated Washington County. There’s a veteran preference on the lease-up policy, so people who sign up to be on the wait list, if they’re a veteran, then they get bumped up the list.”

Financing the project has been complex, Ursin said. But because NHA has avoided using federal low-income housing tax credits, Clackamas County should be able to smoothly take over the building after it is up and running.

“We’re functioning as a turnkey developer for them,” Ursin said. “As we convert to permanent financing, the Housing Authority will purchase the project from us and then they will continue ownership and operations for the next several decades.”

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A new 3 million-gallon concrete water reservoir is being built off of Southeast Verlie Street in Happy Valley, and it’s a jarring sight amid some single-family homes in the Clackamas County suburb.

A massive amount of earth has been scooped out of the hillside by Landis & Landis Construction, the excavation subcontractor for the new $8.5 million reservoir project being carried out by the Sunrise Water Authority and general contractor Ward-Henshaw Construction of Canby. In all, more than 44,000 cubic yards of dirt and 8,000 cubic yards of bedrock will be excavated and hauled from the site in order to allow the new reservoir to sit alongside an existing 2.5 million-gallon concrete tank at the same grade.

“It’s a huge amount of dirt and a huge amount of rock,” said Wade Hillard, senior superintendent in charge of the jobsite for Ward-Henshaw Construction. “The first step was just getting all the mass excavation out, and now we’re at the rock excavation.”

The project is one of the largest undertaken by the Sunrise Water Authority in recent years and comes in belated response to population growth.

“We’re a little behind on keeping up with that,” said Dan Fraijo, project manager for the water provider. “So, this will bring us up to par. But not too much extra.”

Space has been reserved for more than a decade for the new reservoir. The project is part of the agency’s 20-year capital improvement plan.

Excavation and construction is expected to take around 16 months to complete. A further five months will be needed for backfill and final grading, with a final goal, Fraijo said, of getting the new reservoir online by late summer 2019.

Because of its sensitive location in the middle of an affluent suburb, the project is being carried out with restrictions on noise and hours of operation. There even are a pair of decibel meters on fences to the east and west sides of the excavation site to ensure adherence to agreed-upon noise limits.

“This job is interesting just because it’s in the tight quarters of this neighborhood,” Hillard said. “So, the logistics and access and stuff has been a little bit of a fight keeping the neighbors happy, keeping the owners happy and keeping it on schedule. It’s a constant grind.”

Technically, a reservoir is little more than a round concrete tank placed atop a large concrete slab and footings. But this reservoir is being constructed with seismic resilience in mind; it’s not a conventional post-tensioned concrete structure.

“Everything is independent of each other,” Hillard said. “If you look at a house or a school, you have your concrete footing and your rebar sticking out and then your wall would sit on top of that rebar and everything’s tied together with steel and concrete. Whereas on this reservoir it’s completely independent of each other.”

Instead, the concrete core walls sit on rubber pads and are strengthened on the interior by vertical seismic tendons similar to post-tensioned cables.

“You don’t have any rebar connecting things, so you have the seismic cables and you have rubber,” Hillard said. “In theory, if there’s ever a seismic event the wall is independent of the footing.”

Concrete reservoirs are not only stronger than their steel counterparts, but also far easier to maintain over time.

“The biggest difference is there is basically zero maintenance on the concrete reservoirs; it’s all poured and done,” Hillard said. “If you have a steel tank you have to go in probably on a yearly basis because they’re coated and they’re not going to last as long.”

That’s a huge consideration in the face of regional population growth and the need to build further infrastructure in coming years, which is exactly what the Sunrise Water Authority is planning for. It has plans to build another reservoir and has already contracted with Clackamas River Water for storage space in a new 6 million-gallon reservoir that agency is building off of Southwest 152nd Avenue as part of an eight-year, $40 million series of infrastructure projects.

“There is another reservoir planned at this same elevation further east within the next five to 10 years just to keep up with that curve,” Fraijo said.

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Developer George Heidgerken and a coalition of government partners may have broken an impasse that has stalled the Willamette Falls Legacy Project for months.

Heidgerken has signed multiple permit applications that may allow the project’s initial phase to proceed into permitting, the government partners announced, saying they are “cautiously optimistic.”

“Falls Legacy has signed permits, and we’re very appreciative,” said Laura Terway, Oregon City‘s community development director.

The project has been stuck since September, when the government partners said Heidgerken, who purchased the property in 2014, would neither sign permit applications nor submit various payments of more than $200,000 to allow the project to go forward.

Heidgerken said Wednesday he’s signed permit applications for phase one, which would allow public viewing of the massive Oregon City waterfall.

“We’ve agreed with Metro that there’s certain things we’ll let them do, and it’s called phase one,” he said. “My understanding of phase one is it gets the public access to the falls.”

The government partners are ready to apply for permits and will do so as soon as Heidgerken comes through with various payments, including tax and utility bills, that total about $280,000, Terway said.

“A strong public-private partnership requires trust, and because being a good steward of public money is a top priority, the project partners group asked the staff to wait on permit applications until after Falls Legacy follows through on their commitment to make payments to the project this spring,” she said.

Heidgerken, a Tacoma, Washington-based developer, acquired the site, the former Blue Heron paper mill, in 2014 after it had sat unused for years. He soon agreed to an easement with the government partners to construct a walkway.

Metro, along with Oregon City, Clackamas County and the state of Oregon, last year unveiled an ambitious site design by Snohetta, a major international design firm based in Oslo, Norway. Heidgerken objected, saying Metro and the other government partners were trying to elbow him out of the project. Instead of a mixed-use area with a hotel, multifamily housing and restaurants, the Metro-led design process had essentially resulted in a park, he said.

“Metro is really good at one thing – building parks,” Heidgerken said. “I don’t think the city, the people that live there, are so interested in a 25-acre park. We want jobs. We want a park. We want to support tourism, and anyone who wants to put a business there. … That project is no good unless we have apartments, condos, people – and that means breweries, a pizza parlor.”

The government partners offered this past fall to buy the site from Heidgerken, but he declined to sell. He also refused to sign the permit applications, saying they were overly broad and would essentially allow Metro to do whatever it wanted without his input.

Metro officials have said they designed the public portions of the project, and left Heidgerken to design the remaining areas. One of the core principles of the project’s master plan is economic redevelopment. Zoning at the site was changed in 2014 from industrial to mixed-use, allowing for a range of development options.

But first comes the public walkway, known as the Riverwalk.

“This plan is for the Riverwalk portion,” Terway said. “We do see it as being very catalytic for the economic redevelopment of the private side.”

Heidgerken said he’s willing to play ball as long as Metro and its partners don’t interfere with his plans for the site.

“I’m prepared to sign whatever fits that project with Metro as long as it fits the realm of whatever’s best for the project, best for Metro and best for me,” he said.

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