o Previously: Farwest Steel Corp. agreed to purchase 20 acres from the Port of Vancouver for
$5 million.
o What’s new: The purchase, scheduled to close on Feb. 6, is being postponed for up to 98 days.
o What’s next: Port officials expect the deal to go through by late March or early April.
Farwest Steel Corp. wants more time to complete its purchase of a 20-acre parcel the Port of Vancouver sold to the company about five months ago in hopes of creating jobs. It’s a move port officials said doesn’t surprise them and that is allowed under a contract between Farwest and the port.
o Previously: Farwest Steel Corp. agreed to purchase 20 acres from the Port of Vancouver for
$5 million.
o What's new: The purchase, scheduled to close on Feb. 6, is being postponed for up to 98 days.
o What's next: Port officials expect the deal to go through by late March or early April.
Farwest plans to build a 341,327-square-foot steel fabrication plant on the 20-acre site and to eventually employ 228 workers there. The Eugene-Ore.-based company wants to complete construction of the facility in late 2011 or early 2012. The company still thinks that schedule will work, Theresa Wagner, the port’s communication manager, said Monday.
However, the company wants extra time on the project.
The delay will come with a cost. Under the terms of the purchase-and-sale agreement between Farwest and the port, Farwest had until Feb. 6 to close on the 20 acres the port sold it in August 2010. The agreement did allow Farwest to take an extra 98 days, at a cost of $500-per-extra day until the deal closes.
Farwest has opted to take the extension, Wagner said. The extension fee is nonrefundable, but will be applied to the $5 million purchase price. If Farwest ultimately decides to back out of the deal, it would forfeit to the port whatever amount it ends up paying in extension fees.
Port of Vancouver officials said they don’t believe it will come to that. Executive Director Larry Paulson said he believes Farwest will close on the property either by the end of March or the beginning of April. Paulson declined to say what prompted Farwest to delay its pursuit of a building permit, saying only that “we hit kind of a stumbling block that we had to work through.”
Request made to city
On Feb. 2, Todd Johnson, a planner for Group MacKenzie — a planning, engineering and architecture firm and consultant to Farwest — sent an e-mail to Jon Wagner, senior planner for the city of Vancouver, saying that “it is necessary to request the city place the permit processing and plan review on hold until March 1.”
Wagner said he doesn’t know why the company asked for the delay.
Wagner said he was working with Johnson, the consultant to Farwest, and with Paul King, president of the Columbia River Alliance for Nurturing the Environment, on addressing concerns about the amount of light and noise Farwest’s new building would generate in the area.
Wagner said Farwest had made certain revisions to its building plans that “I think will address the lighting and noise issues.” However, Wagner added, any final determination by the city is “always open to interpretation or appeal.”
For now, Wagner’s work is on hold at the request of Farwest. “I just put it back in the file and wait to hear from them,” he said.
Farwest’s building permit application is the latest step in the company’s larger plans to consolidate operations at the Port of Vancouver and to grow. The port’s Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a deal in August that sold 20 acres to Farwest for $5 million, clearing a path for the company to build its planned new complex. The company plans to relocate 100 jobs to the site at first and to eventually hire another 128 workers.
Farwest proposed beginning construction on the site in March, according to documents it filed with the city. The company plans to spend roughly $30 million to construct the building, which would house several operations, including steel fabrication, warehousing, covered loading and distribution. Plans call for an additional rail spur to connect the building to rail. Farwest also wants to construct a 20,000-square-foot office building on the site.
