Woodland’s City Council postponed an agreement with the Port of Woodland to evaluate redeveloping a vacant historic building after some expressed fears the port may present inaccurate information to the city to suit its purposes.
During an Aug. 5 City Council meeting, the council considered authorizing the port to perform a market study on 100 Davidson, a vacant downtown building on the corner of Davidson and Goerig streets. This evaluation would outline renovations necessary to make the building ready to lease and analyze current market conditions for its best use. The agreement would not cost the city anything.
The building was once home to what is now called Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue when it served as the district’s station within city limits. The fire district moved into its new facility at 250 E. Scott Ave., near the city’s police station, in 2017. Since then, the city has had no use for the building.
Councilmember Terry Hall believes that the agreement allows the Port to potentially offer a low market study estimate to eventually purchase the property at a lower cost. The port’s different taxing authority is another concern for Hall and other councilors, including Douglas Freimarck.
“It looks innocuous on the surface, but it’s like a Trojan horse when you open it up. There might be several million dollars worth of taxes that lands on the back of the taxpayers, which I would be clearly opposed to,” Hall stated. “I don’t see any other reason for them to do that at all, and I would suspect, not that I would be against it 100%, but they got to have a feeling that there’s a possibility for them to acquire it [or] they wouldn’t volunteer in the first place.”
Mayor Todd Dinehart supported proceeding with the agreement, noting that it comes at no cost to the city and does not commit the city to transferring the building’s ownership. The city currently pays about $400 per month for maintenance. Though the building was donated to the city, it costed $40,000 to renovate it for food carts in 2023. He encouraged moving forward with the evaluation to eventually sell the property to an interested party.
“I was very ecstatic about it… if somebody else can tell us the repairs and the maintenance and the upkeep of what it’s going to take to do to that building, have at it,” Dinehart said.
Council member Melissa Doughty wants the city to move forward in putting the property to use. She supports using the site for community events, though an evaluation is the first step.
“This is not costing us a penny or locking us into a deal where we’re selling it to them. Let them give us something back for what we’ve paid to them,” Doughty said.
Despite the pushback, Hall still found the deal suspicious. Hall believed the port could give the city inaccurate information regarding the state and economic viability of the building.
“The port’s going to look at all the worst possible things that could possibly be wrong. Their goal would be to make it as bad as possible so [they could] buy it cheap or that they could qualify for a revitalization program that they could then tax the people to restore [it],” Hall said.
Dinehart expressed disappointment in the council members’ assumption, and Port of Woodland Executive Director Jennifer Wray-Keene, who attended the meeting online, pushed back against the accusations. She said the port’s elected commissioners are interested in revitalizing the downtown in good faith, and the port does not have the funds to purchase or restore the building because of other capital projects.
“What we saw was an opportunity for the port to work with the city, not to lowball, not to create a negative report. This was [for] working in complete partnership, and the fact that you as a council are talking so negatively of your partner government agency is appalling,” Wray-Keene said. “...Why as a community entity, as a port, would we want to do anything to harm the jewel of the downtown area?”
In August last year, the port commission sent a letter to the council expressing interest in collaborating on downtown redevelopment efforts, including the Davidson property. The City Council ultimately voted 4-3 to table the discussion for the Aug. 19 City Council meeting.
