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Industrial parks in Woodland’s future

426 acres in Woodland Bottoms considered for development, officials say

By Marissa Luck, The Daily News
Published: May 5, 2017, 5:43pm

LONGVIEW — It may be several years away, but eventually a large swath of the Woodland Bottoms will be open for industrial development.

The city of Woodland and Port of Woodland are in the early stages of planning to develop 426 acres of private land for industrial use. The idea is to build something similar to the Mint Farm Industrial Park in Longview.

The city is leading the effort to develop the 426 acres, but it’s working closely with the port, which owns property nearby on Guild Road. Both port and city officials said there is growing demand for industrial properties in Woodland.

“I think because of Woodland’s location on the I-5 corridor, we have rail access, we have the rivers and it’s basically flat, open land. What I hear from the Port of Woodland is that it’s very much in demand,” Woodland City Administrator Peter Boyce said.

The Woodland City Council approved $100,000 to pay for a feasibility study to begin planning roads and utility lines for 426 acres of land south of Guild Road/Scott Avenue and west of the BNSF Railway tracks in April.

The undeveloped land lacks road or utility connections. Private landowners have pushed the city to look at adding the infrastructure to improve the land’s marketability, Boyce said.

“The problem right now is we have a number of private property owners out there who are … wanting to sell some of their property, but it’s a big (expense) for one developer to come in and run water and sewer (and roads),” Boyce said. “Basically, we need to get the bones in place to attract the businesses.”

Erin Thoeny, whose farming family owns 160 acres of property in the area, said there have been more developers expressing interest in recent years since the recession.

“I know by talking to the brokers … that firms are going elsewhere because this area does not have the infrastructure; a couple of them had quite a number of jobs with it,” Thoeny said.

Although much of the private property is being used for agricultural purposes, much of it already is zoned for industrial use.

The city’s feasibility study will determine how best the city can extend roads, sewer, water and electric lines into the area, and analyze what kind of industrial developers might be interested in locating there. While the city will pay for the study, the infrastructure will be paid for by the private landowners and/or developers, potentially through a Local Improvement District or some other type of financing option, Boyce said. (A LID is a special taxing district in which property owners finance improvements, such as new utilities or sidewalks, through their property taxes.)

In a separate project nearby, north of Guild Road, the Port of Woodland is planning to develop its 28-acre Guild Road Industrial Parks I and II into a light industrial area for warehousing, transportation and distribution firms.

Conceptual plans for Guild Road Industrial Park I are complete, and recently the Port of Woodland commission awarded a contract to Gibbs and Olson to conduct a site plan and conceptual design for Guild Road Industrial Park II.

Together, the Guild Road and the Woodland Bottoms projects would add nearly 500 acres of industrial property to Cowlitz County. That’s on top of the more than 100 acres of undeveloped Weyerhaeuser Co.-owned property at Mint Farm Industrial Park, the future industrial park planned at Port of Longview’s Barlow Point, the Coweeman Park in Kelso and Spencer Creek Business Park at Port of Kalama.

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