The Changing Timber Industry Crown Pacific Altered An Entire Industry

Crown Pacific isn’t the only timber company to padlock mill yards in the past few years.

But its sudden arrival in the Inland Northwest, followed by an almost immediate paring of a network of sawmills, has been the most dramatic.

Crown Pacific went from puny to prominent in this region on Sept. 8, 1993, when it snapped up a huge chunk of timberland and the mills it fed.

Crown Pacific of Portland went deep in debt to secure seven sawmills and 210,000 acres of trees - all worth an estimated $250 million.

“We do not anticipate any (mill) closures at this time,” Tony Leineweber, a company vice president, said then.

But over the next three years, the company’s actions belied his words. Gone soon after the deal were mills in Spokane and Superior, Mont., cutting hundreds of jobs.

Crown Pacific millworkers went on strike in April 1995 in Thompson Falls, Mont., over benefits. Crown Pacific decided to close the mill, ending the strike.

The company wavered on renovating the mill. After a fire there, the company sold it to Riley Creek Lumber Co. of LaClede, Idaho.

Crown Pacific announced the closure of the Albeni Falls mill in April. The mill’s cedar-drying operation has been sold to Merritt Bros. Lumber Co. and the rest will be auctioned later this year.

Of the original seven mills, only three remain, one each in Coeur d’Alene, Bonners Ferry, Idaho - now partially closed for renovation - and in Colburn, Idaho.

In 1993, Crown Pacific’s Inland division had more than 1,000 employees. Its Idaho mills now employ 365 people, plus 54 more at a trucking company.

Company officials have consistently said the company remains in the timber business for the long haul.

“Crown Pacific is a resource-driven company,” said Fletcher Chamberlin, company spokesman in Portland. “We’re going to continue managing that resource for the long-term value of our shareholders.”

However, some believe Crown Pacific snatched up Inland Northwest forests solely to supply its log export business. The mills that came with the trees, some argue, were extraneous.

“They didn’t buy our mills to keep men working,” says 38-year-old Kevin Smith, a former saw operator at Long Lake Lumber Co.

The owner of Crown Pacific - Peter W. Stott - “is a log broker. He’s making lots of money,” Smith said.

Stott created Crown Pacific in 1988, and quickly built a timber company from scratch that owns 737,000 acres of land containing 4.7 billion board feet of timber.

Begun with $1 million, Crown Pacific now touts stock worth $360 million. The company’s latest purchase involved hundreds of thousands of acres of prime forestland in Oregon and the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, but no mills.

Crown Pacific also owns timberland in north-central Washington state - some in Okanogan County - where logs are cut for export. No mills service those tracts of land.

”(Stott) can make more money selling timber than paying 10 guys to turn it into lumber,” Smith said.

Crown Pacific closed Spokane’s Long Lake mill months after buying it. Smith was laid off. He took timber retraining money and earned his two-year degree in real estate management.

He’s happy to be gone.

“They did me a favor,” he said. “There was no room for advancement. We never had a good retirement.”

To grow as fast as Crown Pacific has, the company has sold stock to pay for the piles of debt used to buy all the forest land and mills.

While cutting back the mill side of the business, Crown Pacific’s earnings have steadily improved, even in light of lousy lumber prices.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo Graphic: Falling impact of timber

The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Eric Torbenson Staff writer Staff writer Ken Olsen contributed to this report.