The four parcels of land drivers see first as they cross the Wishkah River bridge into Aberdeen — where the city’s $15 million Gateway Center, a project it abandoned in 2022, would have been built — was put on the city’s list for sale as surplus on Feb. 14.
The city council recessed the Feb. 14 meeting for more than an hour to discuss which public properties to send to market, and approved a list including the four former Gateway properties.
But as of the council’s Feb. 28 meeting, the land will remain under city ownership, at least for the foreseeable future. Near the end of that meeting, the council approved David Gakin’s motion to remove the Gateway Center properties from the list of sale for use by the public works department.
Gakin said the department reached out to the council after the surplus decision to notify them that it was planning on using the properties as a staging area for several large upcoming projects. Rick Sangder, the city’s public works director, said the parcels will be useful as a central location as construction commences in the next few years on the North Aberdeen Bridge, the North Shore Levee, the rail separation and upgrades to the Wishkah bridge.
“You need to have a place to store them until you use them,” he said.
Three of the four vacant parcels, which total about one acre in area, sit wedged between Wishkah Street and Fuller Way, across from Zelasko Park, while the fourth stretches north toward the roundabout the city installed in 2022. Several billboards stand on the ground on the east side of the property, while the city’s Tesla Supercharger station lies one block to the west.
The city acquired the fourth parcel in 2007 from Grays Harbor County for $13,000. Its 2024 market value is $174,000, according to the Grays Harbor County Assessor’s office.
The city purchased the other three parcels, along with a since-demolished building, in 2016 for about $520,000 in total. The cumulative assessed value of that land today is about $352,000.
Planning for the Grays Harbor Gateway Center, a two-story economic visitor center and gathering place, began in 2013 and was halted in August 2022 with a little more than half of the $15 million secured. A few months later the city decommitted the $7 million previously earmarked for the project.
“That piece of property, I would love to put that back on the books so that a business has an opportunity to develop there, but the levee project is the city’s highest priority,” Aberdeen City Administrator Ruth Clemens said in an interview. “If there’s a need that we need to fulfill we have to try to accommodate that.”
With the Aberdeen-Hoquiam levee grinding through federal permitting and other projects still years out from breaking ground, it might not be until near the end of the decade until the properties are cleared up for future use, Sangder said.
At that time, it would take city council action to move it back into the surplus list.
Aberdeen Mayor Doug Orr said that prior to the surplus move the city weighed several options for the future of the uniquely-positioned properties, including for farmer’s market infrastructure and the interest of a “chain retailer,” but the discussions produced “nothing concrete.”
According to Liz Ellis, a council member with the city of Aberdeen and proponent of the former Gateway Center project, the city has no plans for the properties beyond the public works storage space.
“The thinking is to let a private developer transform the site into a welcoming, economically viable project that serves locals and invites travelers to stop and get to know Aberdeen better,” Ellis wrote in a text message.
Contact reporter Clayton Franke at 406-552-3917 or clayton.franke@thedailyworld.com.
