Developers hope the prominent Portland parcel with a storied past can host a vibrant mixed-use project.
A troubled riverside property in central Portland is again for sale, this time for $6.5 million, signaling the desire of an ambitious young developer to walk away.
According to a listing by Kidder Matthews, the site of the Louis Dreyfus Co. grain terminal at 900 N. Thunderbird Way, currently used to store shredded tires, could be so much more, like a “live-work-play” mixed-use project akin to the Vancouver Waterfront.
“This property has tremendous future upside potential as a redevelopment for mixed-use/residential with connectivity to The Rose Quarter, adjacency to light rail and with outstanding views of the Portland skyline and Willamette River,” reads the listing.
The property marketing was first reported by local architect and development blogger Iain Mackenzie.
With a towering row of grain silos, the facility was built in 1914 by global agriculture merchant Louis Dreyfus Co. The three-acre parcel adjoins a railyard owned by Union Pacific and has one of the only private deep-water docks in the Columbia River system, according to the brokers. Other features include Opportunity Zone status, closeness to the Albina Vision Trust’s planned redevelopment and the city’s largest billboard, according to the listing.
Today, the parcel at the east end of the Steel Bridge is considered fully leased and able to generate around $325,000 per year from a pair of tenants. The Oregonian reports one tenant is Lamar Advertising, which rents the massive billboard affixed to the silos and visible from the east. The other occupant is an export business co-owned by timber scion Beau Blixseth that ships rubber for recycling via the railyard and deepwater dock.
The site is zoned industrial and would require a rezone for commercial uses.
For decades, the terminal shipped U.S. grain around the world. Its recent history has been marked by mystery. Starting around 2013, the Louis Dreyfus Co. spent $21.5 million to upgrade the property before selling in 2019 for the curiously low figure of $164,000. The buyer was Rabin Worldwide, a California auction house and real estate investment company. The sale came during a turbulent decade as the grain trader was buffeted by erratic weather, stiffening competition, new tariffs and a trade war with China, according to the Portland Business Journal. Around 2019, the facility was closed.
In 2021, Blixseth bought the property for $2.9 million through an LLC. He thought a buyer could use the grain elevator for its intended purpose but also saw potential for grand features like a Ferris wheel reminiscent of the London Eye, a Willamette Week investigation found. In the meantime, he rented to Castle Tire Recycling, which used the property to store scrap tires. The owner of Castle Tire was revealed to be a business partner of Blixseth’s and co-owner of the property.
In 2022, tons of shredded scrap tires were piled outside the silos. Willamette Week found the tires are shipped to Asia where they’re burned for fuel. Blixseth had learned the rail tracks at the property no longer met Union Pacific’s safety guidelines and require realignment, which possibly led Louis Dreyfus to offer the parcel for a fire-sale price three years earlier.
In May of last year, one of the three-story tire piles caught fire and re-ignited three times that summer. The owners were later cited by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality for operating an unpermitted waste storage site and fined $13,600.
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