A bigger Bear Mountain

Bear Mountain marks the Port’s first sale in the business park. The deal sets in motion infrastructure investment and job creation on a piece of property that has sat vacant for over a decade.

Bear Mountain has leased acreage from the Port’s business park since 1990, but it will now own its land and expand its operations.

Cascade Locks property manager Holly Howell said Bear Mountain’s geographic “footprint” won’t grow much bigger, but there will be at least one new building, and operations will be shifted around due to the newly drawn legal area Bear Mountain will occupy.

The expansion comes in the wake of Bear Mountain’s merger in February with Lignetics Inc., a wood pellet manufacturer with plants on East and West coasts. The two wood pellet companies, the oldest of their kind in the United States, teamed up to expand and diversify their wood-based products. These include wood and barbecue fuel pellets, wood bricks and several brands of animal bedding.

“We at Bear Mountain are very excited about purchasing our manufacturing site in the Port’s Business Park. Being a long term tenant and now property owner will help us continue our growth and strengthen the many long term relationships we’ve built with our friends in the Cascade Locks community,” said Bear Mountain chairman Bob Sourek.

The companies buy Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar sawdust from sawmills across Oregon and Washington, then transform them into usable products, distributed around the nation.

“The expansion opportunity with Bear Mountain is a great step forward for this community,” said Port Commission President Jess Groves. “The deal says a lot about the value of working together to help existing businesses expand.”

The Port will hold dollars from the property deal in a development fund, created in the Port’s 2014-15 budget, for the purpose of developing infrastructure to make adjacent properties “shovel ready” for business development.

The Port is budgeting for an immediate investment of $1.2 million to build adequately sized water, sewer and power lines into the business park.

The Port is also negotiating with three other businesses for properties in the business park, ranging from three to 25 acres in size.

One of the businesses is Puff Factory, which is interested in purchasing four acres to create a plant dedicated to transforming local orchardists’ fruit into freeze-dried fruit snacks. The Port is also negotiating the lease of an industrial “flex” building that Puff Factory has been eyeing.