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Port of Ridgefield approves $4 million purchase of a 17-acre land tract

By Cami Joner
Published: April 29, 2010, 12:00am

The Port of Ridgefield on Wednesday approved the $4 million purchase of a 17-acre land tract for future job development on the west side of the city’s Interstate 5 junction.

The deal with the site’s seller, Vancouver developer Elie Kassab, now gives the port about 30 acres of contiguous land when added to 13.7 acres the port purchased for $638,000 in January from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. as part of a bundle of failed bank assets. The entire tract borders the east side of South 45 Avenue on the southeast quadrant of its intersection with Pioneer Street, about one-quarter mile west of I-5.

“This property could make an ideal single-tenant corporate campus,” among other possible uses, said Brent Grening, the port’s executive director in a written statement.

Ridgefield’s three-member board of commissioners unanimously approved terms of the deal, in which the $4 million purchase price of the property will be spread out over the next 10 years.

Kassab, owner of Prestige Development, said he paid more than $3 million for the tract, which he purchased as a deed in lieu of foreclosure in a series of transactions that started in 2006. He bought the site from RidgeCrest, the site’s former developer, and the now defunct Bank of Clark County.

With a $21 million construction project under way to widen the I-5 overpass into Ridgefield, the town is expected to be Clark County’s next outlet for growth.

Terms of the port agreement bind Kassab to reinvest at least $1 million in another property purchased within the port’s 57-square-mile district.

Kassab said he is considering one of two sites that are situated closer to the I-5 junction. There he expects to develop the 12-plex cinema and retail complex that he had originally planned for the 17-acre site.

Kassab expects the project to be similar to the Gardner Center in Battle Ground, a $19 million retail-movie theater project that opened in 2005.

Kassab also operates multi-screen cinemas in Sandy, Ore., and Independence, Ore. He built and opened the downtown Vancouver City Center 12 cinema in 1998 but sold it in 2006.

Cami Joner covers the Port of Ridgefield. Reach her at 360-735-4532 or cami.joner@columbian.com.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story has been changed to reflect the correct seller of the adjacent, 13.7-acre land tract, the FDIC.

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