Future of Forest Service land still important

The future of the Forest Service property at the west end of Main Avenue remains a key concern to people in the Sisters Country.

At a joint meeting of the Sisters planning commission and the Sisters City Council last Thursday, Sisters District Ranger Bill Anthony reviewed the attempted sale of the National Forest land in 2008. Anthony also discussed the agency's need to sell the property to finance the construction of new facilities.

"The new facilities are really important to us to meet our long-term needs" said Anthony. "We currently have 13, 14 or 15 older buildings that we maintain for our offices, our employee housing and work center. We would be going down to four or maybe five buildings. Getting all of our employees in one building plus a work center will really help our internal communication, coordination and teamwork."

Many of the current buildings are old and expensive to maintain.

Site plans and all the architectural plans are complete to build a new office on the 19-acre parcel north of Barclay Drive. The proceeds from the sale of the balance of the 80-acre parcel would be used to finance the building of the new office/work building/barracks complex.

The 2008 estimate for the completion of construction of the new office complex was pegged at $14 million. Hitting the market just as real estate began to tank, there were no bidders on the acreage in the online auction at that time.

"Feedback we got was that potential investors were uncertain what the City of Sisters would allow on the property, and for them to invest a significant amount of money they needed to have some assurance they were going to get a return on investment," said Anthony. "Others suggested that when we put it back on the market we might break it into smaller pieces. Small properties, smaller investment poses less risk to a potential investor."

Anthony was quick to add that since 2008 the Forest Service has built a new office in Bend with federal stimulus funds. They have also sold off some land. The money originally budgeted for the new Bend facility and the proceeds from the land sale will be available for the construction of the Sisters facility. These monies, combined with the considerable recession-based decrease in construction costs, is expected to significantly reduce the original $14 million minimum bid requirement.

The entire 80-acre Forest Service parcel is within the Sisters Urban Growth Boundary, and borders on the current downtown section of Sisters. The size and location of the property has created keen interest in how the property is developed.

"The specific direction that we need from the council and the commission is the answer to two questions," said City Planner Eric Porter. "One, we need to know where the downtown starts and, two, should the property be a transitional area within the land to the north which is kind of a mixture of highway commercially zoned properties that are developed and undeveloped."

Porter shared the results of a city plan for the property developed since July of 2010 under a $62,000 Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) grant. Included in the plan was input from a 2008 survey and 2010 interviews of stakeholders (city councilors, planning commissioners, city staff, Forest Service staff, ODOT staff, business owners, developers and residents). The city plan includes two potential zoning/development possibilities for the forestry property.

The options include the possibility of extending "downtown" to Barclay Avenue to the west.

While City Manager Eileen Stein and Porter did not get answers to the two questions they proposed at the outset of the meeting, there was a great deal of lively discussion about how to approach the potential sale of the property.

Councilor Sharlene Weed was supported in her desire to find a way for the city to somehow acquire the property. After the meeting, Sisters Park & Recreation District (SPRD) board member Mike Morgan indicated that he would do some preliminary investigations into the possibility of SPRD, with their much larger tax base, acquiring the property.

There was general agreement that the city would like to support the Forest Service's efforts in any way possible and that given the reality of the current commercial downturn in Sisters, it would be a long time before Sisters would need or could justify new commercial development.

There also appeared to be some agreement that the most expeditious way to support the Forest Service and to respond to the desire to control Sisters' western gateway would be to find a way for some entity in the Sisters Country to purchase the property outright. It was also agreed that this would take some very creative financing from "some direction," or a generous local "angel" investor.