PORTLAND — A large Northwest Portland industrial site eyed for a potential Major League Baseball stadium has been sold to a group of longtime real-estate investors and developers.
The sale sidelines a group angling to bring a baseball team to the city, but it doesn’t totally preclude the possibility of building a ballpark on the site, one of the buyers said.
The seller is ESCO Corp., a maker of mining and construction equipment that was founded more than a century ago in Portland. The $33 million deal closed Friday.
The group of buyers include a slate of familiar names with deep interests in Northwest Portland.
Among them: Pearl District developer Al Solheim; Walsh Construction cofounder Bob Walsh; Noel Johnson, a principal in the development firm Cairn Pacific; former bank executive Bob Ames; Warren Rosenfeld, the president of a Northwest Portland recycling firm; real-estate investor Roger Burpee; and his son, real-estate broker Greg Burpee.
Johnson said the deal came together in a matter of weeks, and the group hasn’t yet determined its plans for the site.
The 22-acre tract includes a mishmash of zoning. While most of the land is zoned for industrial use, there’s one parcel that’s zoned for residential development, as well as two office buildings and a research facility still used by ESCO. The industrial land will require environmental cleanup after its long use for heavy manufacturing.
Johnson said the investment group wouldn’t rush into developing the site, and any major effort could be a decade away or more.
“There probably will be other persons who are interested in purchasing or doing other developments on a portion of this,” Johnson said. “We don’t need to do it all ourselves.”
That could include the baseball stadium floated by the Portland Diamond Project.
That group issued a statement Friday after the sale was announced: “Our negotiations with ESCO regarding acquisition of its Northwest Portland industrial property did not comply with our ballpark development timelines. However, we look forward to working with the new owners to explore future opportunities.”
