WOODLAND — For decades, Doug Fredrickson has looked across the street from his truck repair shop and seen an empty lot.
Within the next couple of years, there could be an apartment building there, as city officials are discussing rezoning the lot from light industrial to residential. Fredrickson, along with numerous other neighboring business owners and residents, isn’t happy about it.
“This town wants more jobs,” Fredrickson said. “That plot of land could generate some revenue for the city.”
The parcel, 1350 Glenwood St., Woodland, was owned for the last few decades by the Woodland Community Swimming Pool Committee, which sold it to Corporate Financial Solutions for $350,000 earlier this year.
The plan is to build a 76-unit apartment complex on the parcel. The apartments could be two-bedroom, one-bathroom units, Steve Gibson of Corporate Financial Solutions said at the June 5 city council meeting.
Woodland Mayor Will Finn estimated that nearly 50 people showed up at the meeting, the biggest crowd in his year and a half as mayor. Normally, he said, council meetings have an audience of two or three. The crowd was there to discuss the potential rezoning. The city’s planning commission will look at the issue and make a recommendation to the city councilors. It’s then up to the councilors to vote on the rezoning.
There were two main groups of opponents at the meeting, Finn said: those who don’t think the parcel should be rezoned from industrial at all, and others who are worried the rezoning will lead to more low-income housing coming to Woodland.
As for the latter, the developers at the city council meeting said that’s not their plan for the apartment complex. Chris Roewe, a partner with Woodford Commercial Real Estate who helped the developers find the property, said the complex will have more “luxury apartments,” which the city currently lacks.
“There has to be a place to live,” he said at the meeting. “I know we have low-income housing, but that’s not what we need. We need a step or two above.”
Neighboring business owners don’t want to see the land rezoned to residential because they don’t think taking away potential industrial jobs will help the city.
“I just don’t understand why the planning commission would even think about houses on this parcel,” Fredrickson said. “This parcel could generate a lot of income and taxes for the city.”
Fredrickson has owned A-1 Truck Repair at 550 Columbia St. since 1986. He’s the co-owner of Truck Shops Inc., which owns the building at 550 Columbia. That building houses five companies with about 25 employees.
At the council meeting, Fredrickson handed over petitions with more than 100 signatures from Woodland business owners and residents who don’t want to see the parcel rezoned.
Darlene Johnson, owner of Woodland Truck Lines, brought up a survey the city conducted in 2015 before its most recent comprehensive plan was finished, where residents were asked about their top priorities for future city actions. The top response was “recruit new businesses for more employment opportunities.” The option received the most first-place and top-three votes. She also brought up nearby Lilac Place, a low-income housing complex that was rezoned to residential.
“We already rezoned a parcel that was industrial for housing,” she said. “This is so unacceptable because housing provides no long-term jobs. The industrial area was zoned that in order to provide family-wage jobs. We keep seemingly allowing encroachment into the industrial area by rezoning it.”
Fredrickson said another reason he doesn’t think the parcel should be rezoned goes back to the pool committee. Committee members ended up selling the land after deciding it wasn’t right to put a pool there, partially due to the heavy truck traffic, said Benno Dobbe, president of the committee’s board.
If it was too dangerous for a pool, wouldn’t it also be too dangerous for housing, Fredrickson said.
Dobbe said the committee reached out to pool experts to see if that parcel would work as a pool and be attractive to the YMCA. They heard from multiple people that parcel wouldn’t be a good spot, so they set about finding a new location. A few years ago, the committee purchased land beside Horseshoe Lake.
“We tried to get opinions from people who run pools across the country about the location,” Dobbe said. “We felt it was in our interest and the interest of the community to make sure we have the right location. We went from a less-than-perfect location to a very, very perfect location.”
Dobbe said the land was on the market for some time while the committee tried to get the best price for it.
Still, the developers at Corporate Financial Solutions are determined to make it work. Damion Humphrey with Corporate Financial Solutions said ideally they’d like to break ground beginning next year and start pre-leases in summer 2018. He also said there have been some early discussions about what to do with the land if the city votes against rezoning, but nothing the developers are willing to share publicly at this time.
Humphrey said that Woodland needs more housing, as the only places to move into right now are new houses or low-income housing units.
“Without housing, they’re not going to continue to grow and get the industrial jobs they want,” he said. “We’re trying to help improve that.”
