Bids Now In Hand For L-P Property In Post Falls Potential Buyers Not Identified; Agreement Expected Next Week

The bids are on the table for 33 acres of Louisiana-Pacific Corp. land on the Spokane River.

The site was one of seven the company put on the auction block this year in an attempt to divest about $50 million worth of properties in three states. Sealed bids on all the listings were due Wednesday.

“The bids will be reviewed this afternoon and tomorrow,” Barry Lacter, an L-P public relations official said Wednesday. “Assuming there’s an acceptable bid, we’ll begin negotiations with that party.”

Lacter declined to identify potential buyers for the Post Falls site but said an “agreement in principle” could be reached by next week on the former sawmill property.

L-P offered that land at a minimum bid of $6.5 million cash. The company has reserved the right to refuse bids below that amount.

Tim Reinertsen, an agent with the Bellevue, Wash., commercial real estate firm handling the sale, confirmed that more than one bid was made on the Post Falls listing.

“L-P now has a week to review what has come in,” he said.

As expected, interest came primarily from developers who may decide to build a resort hotel and convention center complex along the river, but the potential for commercial development on Spokane Street remains a strong possibility.

Three architectural renderings accompanied the sales proposal. Designed by Bill LaRue, a landscape architect for the Spokane firm of David Evans & Associates, the plans were meant to spark ideas for improvements.

“We had three radically different uses for the waterfront,” said LaRue, who listed a sprinkling of exclusive single-family homes and a higherdensity row of town houses as two versions of shoreline development.

A third concept shows a resort hotel on the water - a plan that presents considerable difficulty on the development side.

Based on architectural drawings, the proposed location for the facility would sit just 300 feet from the Washington Water Power Co. dam on the Spokane River.

“The resort would be associated with the water but couldn’t be used for recreation or boat access,” LaRue explained. “WWP doesn’t want people out there swimming around.”

In fact, WWP doesn’t want people allowed anywhere near the water, according to Dave Ayres, a company hydro-safety coordinator.

“We support development there, but we feel the (shoreline) needs some kind of fence or structural restriction,” he said.

No mention was made in the sales proposal of the dam’s proximity, WWP’s safety concerns or existing city and county ordinances restricting access to the river.

“If I was selling the property, I wouldn’t make a big deal of that either,” Ayres said.

Environmentally, the site has no hidden problems. Below-ground storage tanks were removed two years ago under Department of Environmental Quality scrutiny. The only thing remaining to be cleaned up is wood chip waste along the shore, said Brad Marshall, a planner in the Post Falls office of Adams & Clark Engineering.

“People look at industrial sites as potential problems, but it was a raw lumber mill that didn’t treat anything,” Marshall said. “L-P did a very detailed study about a year ago when they recognized the value of that property.”

Post Falls is pinning hopes for downtown growth on the next stage of evolution at the old sawmill. City officials now have their fingers crossed that the multimillion-dollar price tag and recreational restrictions won’t trip up negotiations.

“If the water was usable, that’d be one thing,” said Post Falls associate planner Colin Coles. “If not, that price is pretty optimistic.”

If a bid is accepted by L-P, the buyer’s name will be released within 10 days, Lacter said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Map: L.P. mill site