The Camas Planning Commission has signed off on preliminary plans for a nearly 943,000-square-foot industrial business park along Northwest Lake Road.
The proposal would construct two warehouse buildings and one manufacturing building on 74.06 acres at 4707 and 4723 N.W. Lake Road, across from the WaferTech campus. It won unanimous support from the planning commission and was scheduled for review Monday by the Camas City Council, which must provide final approval.
The applicant, Panattoni Development Co., specializes in industrial and office development, with over 2,500 clients, including FedEx, Home Depot, Bridgestone, Tesco, PetSmart, Unilever and HP. The company has developed more than 544 million square feet of space.
A specific company has not been identified for the warehouse buildings, according to city staff.
The project would likely be built in three phases, Camas Senior Planner Lauren Hollenbeck said. The first phase would include a 722,397-square-foot warehouse building on the property’s southern lot, as well as all roads and utilities. A second phase would construct a smaller, 127,191-square-foot warehouse building on the northern lot. A third phase would see a 93,351-square-foot structure described as a manufacturing building in the city’s traffic analysis for the southern lot.
Hollenbeck said the business park would have access points along a separate driveway off Northwest Lake Road as well as from the north via Northwest Camas Meadows Drive.
The site is currently used as pasture, with scattered forested areas and four wetlands on the northern half of the property. The developers plan to retain three of the wetlands, Hollenbeck told the planning commission, but would fill a “low-functioning wetland exempt from buffer regulations due to its isolated location and small size.”
The project also would retain a 50-inch Oregon white oak tree within one of the wetlands — the only white oak with a diameter breast height of over 20 inches, according to the applicant’s arborist survey. Developers plan to retain 476 trees and add 837 in landscaping. Under the city’s urban tree program approved in 2018, the developers will need to have 1,434 trees to meet the city’s requirement of 20 tree units per net acre.
A traffic impact analysis prepared for the applicants in November 2021 by Heath & Associates Inc. shows the business park would likely generate 1,656 average weekday daily trips.
Developers will add a new road along the eastern edge of the site, to provide a north-south connection between Lake Road and Camas Meadows Drive, and a new east-west road through the center of the site that could someday connect to future development west of the business park.
