Developer Greg Specht is in escrow to acquire 40 acres west of Interstate 5 and south of SR 501 and the Port of Ridgefield has acquired 45 acres east of I-5 and west of SR 501. Scott Fraser of Colliers International is the broker behind both deals.
Specht tells GlobeSt.com he is in the process of subdividing the property into 11 lots and he expects to close on his acquisition from Jack Gainer in May. After that, he will start creating pad-ready sites for Ridgefield Commerce Center, which could accommodate as much as 480,000 sf of manufacturing, warehouse and distribution buildings.
Meantime, the Port of Ridgefield last week added 45 acres to 30 acres it already owns diagonally across the freeway exchange. Port Executive Director Brent Grening tells GlobeSt.com the port has paid Waldon Groves $2.53 million or $1.29 per sf for the land.
Development of the Port's acreage, which is zoned for business parks, is likely to take much longer. Specht's would-be land has sufficient water and sewer service close by, and he is already working with the City of Ridgefield on its development. The Port, meanwhile, hasn't really begun the process yet and has bigger obstacles to overcome, including the removal of a longstanding goose habitat overlay and possibly more involved infrastructure upgrades.
"Realistically it will be a couple of years for the pre-development process," Grening tells GlobeSt.com. "On the other hand, there are companies looking all the time and it's not inconceivable that things could (accelerate)."
Fraser says he expects Ridgefield Commerce Center will hold more stand-alone, build-to-suit type manufacturing and distribution buildings while the Port is more likely to go for the brick-and-glass, R&D-type space. Both Specht and Fraser say the Ridgefield area feels like a young Wilsonville, a city that lies about as far south of Portland as Ridgefield lies north of Portland.
"Fifteen-to-20 years ago Wilsonville was a lot of fields and now it is a lot of industrial buildings and corporate centers," says Fraser. "I think Ridgefield is on the same path."
Specht isn't revealing the agreed upon purchase price until the sale is closed, but he did say it will be less than the Port's. "We're very pleased with the cost of the land; we can be the low-cost provider in Southwest Washington," says Specht. "We will sell dirt or buildings; it may take five-to-seven years to sell it off, but the deal made sense and we're well capitalized, so we decided 'let's just be out front on this.'"
Other land around of the freeway exchange is already in the hands of developers. As reported in GlobeSt.com in early 2001, Colorado-based Schuck Development Corp. plans a $500-million, 286-acre mixed-use development called Union Ridge that is located directly across Interstate 5 from Specht's would-be property. So far the site includes an operation by Dollar Tree Stores that occupies 57 acres.
Grening says there's a bigger picture as well. "Our district includes four really undeveloped exits off I-5 and they have a value and what is done will affect the county and Southwest Washington as a whole," he says. "So it makes sense to start planning long term so we get jobs and the junctions complement each other and are interconnected so the local traffic can remain local and we don't clog the corridor.
"So we are beginning to create this vision; we call it Discovery Corridor."
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