A 171-unit affordable housing project is being constructed in Oregon City. Las Flores is intended to serve larger families and older residents, agricultural workers, and people either at risk of homelessness or transitioning out of it; on-site resident services will be provided.

The apartment complex will be co-owned by co-developers Hacienda Community Development Corporation and Community Development Partners (CDP). Hacienda CDC and CDP previously delivered the Rockwood Village Apartments in Southeast Portland.

Salazar Architect designed Las Flores, in which seven apartment buildings will encircle an open green space and a community building. The 4.5-acre site is slightly northeast of the intersection of Oregon Route 213 and South Beavercreek Road. The main community building’s address will be at 14399 Walnut Grove Way, and each building will have its own address.

The project team also includes general contractor LMC Construction, civil engineer Harper Houf Peterson Righellis, structural engineer VALAR Consulting Engineering, and landscape architect PLACE.

The development’s name previously was Maple Apartments before it was changed to Las Flores.

“The name was chosen to reflect the spirit and beauty of Oregon City’s natural landscapes and diverse community,” according to a statement by Hacienda CDC and CDP. “Las Flores, meaning the flowers in Spanish, hopes to be a place where all can bloom and flourish.”

The complex was designed as a community for all ages, in which the benefits of intergenerational living are embraced. Buildings will be clustered around a park-like gathering space, tree-dotted walking paths, children’s play areas, outdoor picnic areas, a community garden, and a community building with a kitchen and multi-use spaces.

Before design began, Portland State University’s Center for Public Interest Design and Salazar Architect worked together to conduct a survey of assets and challenges in the surrounding area. This included meetings with individual community members, whose input helped shape the design as well as the kinds of services that will be offered to residents. The team also interviewed organizations and neighborhood stakeholders. The approach initiated an intentional design process of understanding the community’s needs.

“All of us were on deck for that, including the site planning landscape architect, PLACE, who really helped with the site design,” Community Development Partners CEO Eric Paine said.

The design includes a central plaza. That element has historically represented a space for communities to thrive, Hacienda CDC CEO Ernesto Fonseca said, in which people can congregate in a safe setting.

The apartments will have visual access to the plaza. Hacienda CDC and CDP previously embraced this model for the Rockwood Village Apartments.

At the complex, Hacienda CDC will offer services such as after-school and early childhood education, homeownership counseling and small business advisement, Fonseca said.

Prospective residents must earn no more than 60 percent of the area median income. Twelve units will be set aside for people who work in the agricultural industry. Nine units will be permanent supportive housing, with services provided by Northwest Housing Alternatives (NHA). Those units will be reserved for families transitioning out of NHA’s Annie Ross House in Milwaukie. NHA will provide on-site case management services for those residents.

CDP is working with PLACE on integrating art with wayfinding, like at the Rockwood Village Apartments. It’s a creative storytelling element and another piece of intentional design, Paine said.

Las Flores’ total cost will be slightly more than $71 million. Significant funding came from Clackamas County‘s share of Metro‘s affordable housing bond approved by voters in 2018.

Construction began in June 2022. The community building is expected to be completed first, in June, with the first residential building to follow in July. Construction is scheduled to wrap up in early 2024.

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The general development plan for a large mixed-use development in Oregon City has gained tentative approval with conditions. The city’s Planning Commission will review proposed changes to Park Place Crossing on Sept. 12.

Applicant and developer ICON Construction & Development, along with civil engineer AKS Engineering & Forestry, proposed several changes from the original submission. One is a reduction of overall density from 476 housing units to 440 (287 single-family detached dwellings, 139 single-family attached dwellings and 14 mixed-use apartments). Other revisions include locations of alley-loaded lots vs. topographically constrained ones. Also, the mixed-use/civic/village green area has been changed to three parcels of 0.51 acres, 0.56 acres and 1.26 acres bisected by an additional local street to provide a continuous transportation corridor. There will also be opportunity for additional affordable attached single-family housing and other residential types. And the park was reduced to 4.3 acres but will now be long and linear with extended street frontage.

After the initial public hearing for the project in April, continuances were granted for multiple hearings. Additional time was requested for the project team to address concerns and for staff to provide a report analyzing the revised proposal, and new issues raised at a July 11 hearing, with revised conditions of approval. The hearing will continue to Sept. 5 for adoption.

The Park Place Crossing Master Plan consists of 92 acres that will eventually be built out over six phases. In addition to housing, plans call for community park, open space, regional stormwater management facility, retail-civic, and trail components. The master plan area is within the northernmost portion of the larger Park Place Concept Area established in 2008 through the Park Place Concept Plan.

The property was annexed and assigned zoning in 2018. The general development plan’s overall long-term approach to development through 2023 calls for up to 426 residential lots, parks, trails, and neighborhood commercial and civic spaces. Included in the request for approval is a modification to street width standards for a limited segment of Holly Lane and adjustments to a couple of development standards.

Plan phases are to be reviewed as part of a detailed development plan. More detailed review includes tree removal and mitigation, geologic hazard compliance, stormwater designs, block lengths, final lot sizes and layout.

Some of the conditions of approval include providing street connectivity and walkability to meet the intent of the Park Place Concept Plan, allowing shared driveways, vehicle trip mitigation on local streets, and more. The project team will also need to provide a timeline and plan to complete the Holly Lane to Redland Road connection with submission of the detailed development plan for phases 4-6. Road construction will be subject to the county’s standards.

Phase 1 is expected to be constructed in 2023, with phases 2-6 to follow by 2030. Detailed development plan applications for each phase are expected to be submitted later, following approval of the general development plan.

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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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In October 2012, a crowd gathered to celebrate the reopening of the historic arch bridge near Oregon City, an event that carried more than a hint of déjà vu.

From the use of shotcrete to replicate the bridge’s original texture and look to the choice of Art Deco-style details such as sconce lights, the rehabilitation of the bridge paid tribute to the structure as it first looked nearly 90 years earlier. The project, however, was more a matter of history repeating itself than many people realized.

The options widened in 1898, when the first free suspension bridge west of the Rocky Mountains was completed at Oregon City. The grand opening of the bridge, which a now defunct Oregon City newspaper called The Banner-Courier described as “a line of 12-inch planks,” drew a crowd that included Old Barney, the first horse to officially cross the structure. Before too long, the bridge had become not only the favored way for people to cross the river, but also a major tourist destination, with people coming from Portland by boat to see the structure.

Eventually, the introduction of motorized vehicles increased the burden on the bridge. In 1911, Clackamas County officials brought in a bridge expert, who examined the structure and recommended repairs that closed the bridge for two days to all but pedestrians.

Less than a decade later, the planned completion of the Pacific Highway, described by The Oregonian as a 358-mile hard-paved ribbon of roadway, convinced state officials that the suspension bridge would need to be replaced with a more modern structure able to handle the shifting trends in modes of transportation.

The state transportation department turned to its main bridge engineer, Conde Balcom McCullough, who spent two years studying the spot where the suspension bridge was located. McCullough’s replacement for the site, a through-arch design, went public in 1919, when a drawing of the proposed bridge ran on a page of the Aug. 17 edition of The Sunday Oregonian. The newspaper noted that the construction plans for the bridge called for the use of “fabricated structural steel rib work encased in a protective coating of concrete” – a strategy that offered a combination of the structural rigidity and durability of both materials.

“The plans … embrace that type of construction which is coming more and more into favor because of its conservative features and inherent economy,” the newspaper added.

By 1921, the idea of building a new bridge had garnered support from both sides of the river. Officials in West Linn and Oregon City as well as from Clackamas County signed resolutions asking state legislators to approve bonds to pay for construction of the bridge.

The July 1, 1921, issue of the Capital Journal in Salem carried a page 5 story announcing that A. Guthrie & Co. had won the contract to build the bridge with a bid of $213,601 – the final cost eventually would climb to what was then Oregon’s most expensive bridge at $275,000. Seven months later, 475 tons of steel barged in from Portland stood on the banks of the river waiting for construction to start.

The real work on the bridge was just beginning, however.

The smoke from nearby industrial plants and factories contained sulfur dioxide, a corrosive chemical. So it was determined that the steel that would be used to build the arch would need to be covered with a spray-on material called gunite – a mixture of sand, concrete and water.

An equally perplexing issue was how to build the arch over the water.

McCullough and R.A. Furrow, who would serve as the state’s resident engineer on the project with C.P Richards as assistant engineer, came up with a solution so creative that it made the pages of a 1922 issue of Popular Science magazine.

The bridge arch was to be composed of hollow steel boxes, placed end to end. Once the boxes were all connected, completing the arch, columns would be built to support the roadway along with hangers to suspend the roadway from above. But the boxes needed to somehow be supported while they were being connected over the river.

McCullough and Furrow decided to put the old suspension bridge to work one last time before its eventual demolition, using it to support the arch of the new bridge while it was being built.

By July 1922, construction was well under way on the Oregon City structure, making it one of more than 150 bridges – totaling $1.8 million worth of construction – that that were either contracted for, under construction or completed by the state transportation department during that year.

On Dec. 28 a crowd once again gathered near Oregon City, this time to celebrate the official dedication of Oregon City’s new arch bridge, which at the time was the longest single span highway structure in the country. The event featured speeches and band performances as well as the wedding of a woman from West Linn and a man from Oregon City that served as a symbol of the joining of the two communities by the new structure. The mayors of West Linn and Oregon City led a crowd to the center of the bridge, where a barrier placed there was unlocked and, according to a newspaper reporter, “whistles from the industrial plants and nearby boats issued their glad salute.”

A reporter from The Banner-Courier captured the events of the day and posed a thought-proving question: “We who have witness(ed) the growth from day to day have marveled at the modern miracle of engineering, which has taken (form) before our eyes. Will the next 32 years see this structure replaced with a more modern creation? Or will it last through the century to come?”

The reporter likely wasn’t around almost nine decades later when the question was answered. Increasing traffic, including heavier vehicles, took a toll on the bridge following its original construction, and a major upgrade was required.

The October 2013 dedication ceremony marking completion of the rehabilitation project in large part mimicked the ones held in 1898 and 1922. The only things missing from the modern-day event: a horse like Old Barney and the “glad salutes” from nearby industrial plants and boats.

Flashback Friday is a new 91��Ƶ feature that examines the history of Oregon’s built environment. To suggest a project, event or person for a story, contact 91��Ƶ Editor Stephanie Basalyga at sbasalyga@djcOregon.com or at 503-802-7222.

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As Snohetta architects design Oregon City’s landmark Willamette Falls Riverwalk project, expectations are building for the firm to produce a design worthy of a landmark attraction.

The $60 million Riverwalk has emerged as a potentially regional – and perhaps even national – attraction for Oregon City.

“They’re not internationally known for no reason,” Oregon City Commissioner Nancy Ide said. “They’re one of the best. We expect the best. We have high expectations of what they (will) produce.”

Snohetta and a coalition of government agencies held a public meeting Nov. 17 at Clackamas Community College to allow stakeholders to weigh in on design options. The forum drew a packed house.

The Norwegian firm and design partners Mayer/Reed and Dialog are expected to return in late February 2017 with a preferred design for the Riverwalk.

A landscape architect and Snohetta partner, Michelle Delk, is leading the design team. She said she was struck by Willamette Falls on her first visit.

“It’s so moving and powerful and intriguing and mysterious all at the same time,” Delk said. “You can see so much potential and so much natural beauty that’s already there. It makes your head spin.”

Snohetta has identified six “key moments” on the Riverwalk. Designers are looking for overlook areas or promontories and other spaces where people can be close to the water.

“The goal of this is the Riverwalk is much more than a walkway,” Delk said.

Designers are looking to build several viewpoints and connections to the rest of town, likely including Clackamette Park.

“There can be many paths and many experiences that connect Willamette Falls to the larger community,” Delk said. “We hope to find opportunities to engage the falls in many different ways.”

Designers want to make sure the Riverwalk works well in every season and time of day.

“We do see the design, ultimately, as one that engages the natural qualities of the site,” Delk said.

Snohetta’s involvement has caught the attention of the Portland area’s architecture community. The firm is known for projects such as Norway’s national opera house in Oslo, the National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion in New York City and a proposed reconstruction in Times Square. The firm has been lauded by architecture critics for groundbreaking designs.

Locally, Delk and Snohetta are also leading the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry’s master plan for the nonprofit’s 17-acre site in Southeast Portland. The team planning development of the James Beard Public Market has been invited to participate in OMSI’s master plan after abandoning a site at the Morrison Bridge’s west end.

Delk is personally involved in the OMSI master plan and two major Northern California projects – the expansion of the world-renowned French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley, and a new public plaza in downtown San Francisco. She also helped design the under-construction, 240,000-square-foot central library in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

At the Willamette Falls Riverwalk, ensuring public access is emerging as a critical element. The land previously was under private ownership. The site, the former Blue Heron paper mill, is owned by Falls Legacy, a limited-liability company controlled by Tacoma, Washington, developer George Heidgerken.

Heidgerken is also looking to develop a 415-acre former mill site in Gardiner, near Reedsport, and a retired Olympia brewery facility in Tumwater, Washington.

“The most important piece is the public access,” Ide said. “It needs to be inviting. It needs to be attractive. It needs to flow.”

Ground is scheduled to be broken on the Willamette Falls Riverwalk in mid-2018, said Alex Perove, Metro’s senior parks planner. A general contractor for the project is likely to be selected in early 2018, she said.

The Riverwalk project involves a long list of agencies, including Metro, the state of Oregon, Clackamas County, Oregon City and Portland General Electric, which operates the hydroelectric dam.

CH2M is working on habitat restoration for native and migratory species. Five tribes with historical ties to Willamette Falls are also consulting on the project.

For Oregon City, the project stands to be a much-needed shot in the arm. City leaders have in recent years courted developers to build on a privately-owned landfill site. A proposal to build a Cabela’s sporting goods store on the landfill fell through, and in 2014, the store was completed in Tualatin instead.

Oregon City’s landfill property remains vacant. A developer had recently expressed interest in the property, city commissioner Brian Shaw said. But voters earlier this month rejected extension of Oregon City’s urban renewal program, putting that potential project on uncertain ground.

“We’re looking at options, obviously, because we don’t want to see that thing slide away again,” Shaw said. “We’d like to be prepared for a project if it were to come to fruition on the landfill.”

Oregon City was ready to offer an $18 million loan to assist the Cabela’s project, Shaw said.

The Riverwalk project gives Oregon City the chance to become nationally known as something other than the terminus of the Oregon Trail. City leaders hope it could spur redevelopment downtown. At the same time, some of the city’s 35,831 residents worry about losing what they have.

“We kind of like the small-town feel and people don’t want to lose that,” Ide said, “but when you have a national site you need to share it, not hoard it.”

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Metro is seeking a team to complete schematic design for a planned public path through the former Blue Heron Paper Co. site in Oregon City.

The regional government agency late last week issued a request for proposals from teams interested in completing schematic design and developing a phased plan for construction of the Willamette Falls Riverwalk. The estimated $30 million project involves construction of a path for pedestrians and bicyclists along the Willamette River, adjacent to downtown Oregon City. It will pass through the ex-Blue Heron site and Portland General Electric property to give the public access to nearby Willamette Falls for the first time in decades.

The project is a joint effort of Metro, the city of Oregon City, Clackamas County, the state of Oregon and site owner George Heidgerken. It has been hailed as the first step toward revitalization of the ex-industrial site; it has sat vacant since 2011, when the paper mill shut down.

The schematic design team will work closely with a consultant that Oregon City is seeking to research the cultural history of the site and compile a report.

The schematic design RFP is available on the Oregon Procurement Information Network and through on the Metro website. Proposals are due by 2 p.m. on March 11.

Metro officials plan to hire a design team in June.

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Oregon City officials are seeking a consultant to research the cultural history of the former Blue Heron Paper Co. site and compile a report that will assist the team designing a public path through the property.

A request for proposals has been issued for a consultant to complete a “cultural resource/cultural landscape” report for the estimated $30 million Willamette Falls riverwalk project. The path for pedestrians and bicyclists along the Willamette River, adjacent to downtown Oregon City, will pass through the Blue Heron site and Portland General Electric property to give the public access to nearby Willamette Falls for the first time in decades.

The project has been hailed by Oregon City officials as the first step toward revitalization of the ex-industrial site, which has sat vacant since 2011, when the paper mill shut down.

The consultant’s report will assist Oregon City and other project partners, including developer George Heidgerken, Metro, Clackamas County and the state of Oregon, to ensure the riverwalk design expresses the cultural history of the site and nearby Willamette Falls. The draft report is scheduled to be completed as project design begins so that the design team will have access to information on historic resources, according to a summary of the RFP on the Oregon City website.

Proposals are due by Feb. 4 at 4 p.m. More information is available at .

Qualifications include academic degrees and professional experience in history, archaeology, architectural history, architecture or historic architecture.

Metro officials plan to later this week issue a separate RFP for a team to provide schematic design for the project. The chosen cultural resources consultant will be integrated into this schematic design process.

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The owner of the former Blue Heron Paper Co. site in Oregon City and Portland General Electric officials have signed agreements with Metro that will allow the construction of a public path through their adjoining properties.

Metro is partnering with the city of Oregon City, Clackamas County and the state of Oregon to build the estimated $30 million riverwalk. The path for pedestrians and bicyclists along the Willamette River through PGE property and the Blue Heron site, will give the public access to nearby Willamette Falls for the first time in decades.

The project has been hailed by Oregon City officials as the first step toward revitalization of the Blue Heron site, which has been vacant since 2011, when the paper mill shut down.

The Metro Council on Thursday unanimously approved entering into agreements signed by Blue Heron site owner George Heidgerken, a Tacoma, Wash.-based developer, and PGE officials so the riverwalk project can move forward, Metro spokeswoman Yuxing Zheng said. The agreements will be signed by Metro officials on Monday once all portions of the documents have been finalized, she said.

The agreement with Heidgerken secures a 120-foot riverfront easement for the path. He also committed to pay for 20 percent of the design and preliminary engineering expenses for the project, estimated at $900,000, and at least 20 percent of future maintenance and operations costs for the riverwalk.

PGE officials agreed to allow the path to be built across a portion of the utility company’s dam along Willamette Falls to an area with a prime view of the falls.

Metro officials are currently working on a request for proposals seeking design and engineering services for the project. The RFP is scheduled to be released early next year, Zheng said. A design and engineering team should be hired by late spring 2015 and are expected to take 18 months to develop project plans, she said.

About $10 million has been secured for the first phase of construction from Metro and other project partners, Zheng said.
Last year, the Oregon Legislature approved $5 million in lottery-backed bonds being spent on the path.

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University of Oregon graduate architecture student Jacob Simonson is fascinated by the challenge of bringing people back to the former Blue Heron Paper Co. site in Oregon City.

“It’s kind of an intriguing problem – more of a difficult problem – to address,” he said while peering over a large-scale model of the abandoned paper mill site.

Simonson and other students are building the model as they research the history, conflicts and redevelopment potential for the 23-acre industrial site. The dozen students are part of a yearlong studio class taught by John Yeon Center executive director Randy Gragg and THA Architecture principal Becca Cavell at the UO Department of Architecture in Portland.

The class examines ways to reuse the vacant industrial buildings that were abandoned when the Blue Heron paper mill closed in 2011, reconnect the site to downtown Oregon City and take advantage of the site’s proximity to Willamette Falls. At the conclusion of the studio next summer, each student will present their designs for redeveloping individual buildings on the site.

The course, one of the last the students will take before they graduate, is geared toward designing adaptive reuse projects, Gragg said.

“It’s the last opportunity for the students to be their own client,” he said. “It continues the imagining of the site. This is sort of an act of imagination for what can happen with the building stock.”

On Tuesday, the students marked the end of the studio’s first term with a presentation before the site’s new owner – Tacoma, Wash.-based developer George Heidgerken – and design professionals who created a master plan to encourage redevelopment.

The students shared what they’ve learned so far and sought professional feedback on their initial ideas for adaptive reuse projects. These include production facilities for bikes, food, canoes, outdoor shoes and other apparel. Students are also exploring design of fish and food markets, a mixed-use building, a brewery, an industrial design research institute, an outdoor camp and an interfaith institute.

One of the biggest appeals of the course was working with an actual site and reimagining existing buildings, Simonson said.

“This was just an intriguing site (with) a lot of potential,” he said. “I really enjoy and have done adaptive reuse projects.”

For the first term, the focus was on gathering as much background as possible to eventually inform students’ designs, class member Alex Brooks said. For inspiration, the class twice toured the site with Oregon City officials and traveled to Minneapolis, Minn. to see the Mill City Museum, which is built on the ruins of an abandoned flour mill.

“This studio was a major information download,” Brooks said. “It was about absorbing the site (and) the opportunities and the challenges.”

As a class, the students concluded that they would primarily seek to answer three questions over the course of the studio: What brought people to the site? Why did they leave? And finally, what will bring them back?

After hearing the students’ presentation, Walker Macy principal Mike Zilis praised their approach. The Portland-based landscape architecture and planning firm created for site redevelopment a master plan that recently was approved by the Oregon City Commission.

Zilis reminded the students to embrace what he believes is one of the site’s largest assets: a prime view of Willamette Falls. Any redevelopment should bring the falls back to prominence that was lost because of longtime industrial use on the site, he said.

“This place has been masked,” he said. “It’s been blown up and manipulated, and people can’t see it anymore. The way to build a market and bring people back (is) going to be about the draw of the site.”

Heidgerken said his team is exploring many redevelopment possibilities, such as a brewery or restaurant. Like the UO architecture students, team members have been careful to absorb the history of the site and consider which existing buildings should be preserved, he said.

“It’s not a matter of $5 million here, $30 million here,” he said. “It’s a matter of the site telling you what to do and the history of the site … What we want with this site is not something you see once. We want something that’s attractive to the general public. You come here once and you come back.”

At this point, plans to redevelop the Blue Heron site are open-ended. Heidgerken said he appreciates the architecture students’ visions.

“We don’t know (the plan) yet, but we will and meetings like this help,” he said.

Graduate architecture student Adrienne Fainman said class members are looking forward to sharing their final ideas with the developer.

“In June, we’re going to be presenting 12 projects,” she told Heidgerken. “We’re going to be pouring our hearts into this. We’re going to be able to hand that over to you – 12 fantasy projects.”

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The new owner of a former mill site in Oregon City has big dreams for its redevelopment. George Heidgerken, a Tacoma, Wash.-based developer who in May purchased the ex-Blue Heron Paper Co. property for $2.2 million, thinks its location on the banks of the Willamette River, slightly downstream from Willamette Falls, has great potential.

“That site has incredible opportunity for kayakers and riverboats of all kinds,” he said. “We’re willing to spend a lot of time and energy designing a really cool situation for the kayaks and the people watching them.”

Heidgerken said he and his sons are all avid kayakers, and he thinks Willamette Falls and the river below it could become a popular kayaking destination if there were direct access to the water and a way to navigate the 40-foot-tall falls.

“The problem now is we can’t get them over the falls, but we’re already in talks with people who are in charge of water to see how we can change that,” he said. “We want the kayakers not to be hidden, but to be a big part of the show for people who are sitting right there.”

Heidgerken envisions part of the 23-acre property becoming restaurant and pub space from which diners could watch kayakers running through courses. Those eateries would be as unique and historic as their location, he said.

“We want to create something substantial that may be (a throwback) from the past,” he said. “There are all kinds of special restaurants that were really good in their time and people wonder why they closed. If we could bring some of them back we’d like to do that.”

One example Heidgerken offered was the long-closed Pixie Kitchen in Lincoln City that touted serving “heavenly food on the Oregon Coast.”

“We’re not just looking at the site and the legacy of what occurred there; we’re looking all over the state,” he said. “This is a special place; that’s the reason you pick up a site like that is to figure it out and make something special out of it.”

Christina Robertson-Gardiner, a city planner in Oregon City, said the Community Development Department has been working closely with Heidgerken, but said he hasn’t informed the city of any specific plans. Officials are in the final stages of working out an easement plan with Heidgerken in order to move forward with the Willamette Falls Riverwalk project.

“He is free to go forth and figure out what he wants to do,” Robertson-Gardiner said. “He’s trying to find investors, and we’re excited to see if any of his ideas come to fruition.”

The Oregon City Commission on Nov. 5 approved the second reading of a zone change proposal from traditional industrial to a combination similar to what is used in Oregon City’s downtown.

“The big picture planning started before George came in, but now he’s obviously included,” Robertson-Gardiner said. “Developing the site would almost double our historic downtown area, so these are two parallel paths we’re going to be walking over the next few years.”

Heidgerken said his next step is to bring in a historian to assess the site and determine which buildings are historically significant and which should be razed. Oregon City did the same thing when creating a master plan for the site, but Heidgerken said he plans to do it anyway.

“We don’t intend to do anything without approval from the public because we want to stay out of trouble with everybody,” he said. “Metro has a head start on us with the vision, and we don’t want to throw a wrench into anything they want to do.”

The city identified five structures that must be preserved during any development. Heidgerken said his team has identified others that aren’t historically important. He said he’d like to demolish those and clean the place up.

Robertson-Gardiner said that the city and Heidgerken seem to be on the same page in regard to development and that, at this point, he can start applying for traditional land use permits when he’s ready to move forward.

“The reason this site sold is that we were looking for someone who had a high tolerance for risk and also had money, but those people are few and far between,” she said. “Finding someone who has both is difficult, but that is George.”

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