Port Authority officials planning for the future

More than a decade after the 400-acre Stimson Mill property was deeded to Lincoln County, representatives of the Lincoln County Port Authority are trying to decide what to do with it.

In exchange for indemnification from future liability for any contamination or clean-up of the property, Stimson gifted the property to Lincoln County after closing their lumber mill in Libby. Upon assuming ownership of the property, Lincoln County created the Lincoln County Port Authority, a quasi-governmental agency, to manage the property and spur economic development on the site now known as the Kootenai Industrial Park.

The port authority’s executive director, Tina Oliphant, said it was time to carefully analyze the property and best utilize it as a county asset.

“With new commissioners asking about the blight on the property we had to get smart,” she said. “We had to get educated about the property.”

Oliphant has been with the port authority and its sister agency, the non-profit Kootenai River Development Council for just one year and is starting to get a handle on the breadth of the property and the needed clean-up and planning. Working alongside Oliphant to manage the property and develop a long-term strategic plan is Brett McCully, the port’s director of operations. McCully has also been with the port for one year.

Oliphant said she and McCully have spent a great deal of time investigating the property and working to sketch out the broad strokes of a strategic plan for its development.

“The effort just to get focused here, just to come to this spot has been huge,” she said. “We feel good about that. At least we now know what the elements can be. We don’t have all of the information yet, but we’re getting there.”

Oliphant said there was an initial engineering survey conducted at the site, roughly 10 years ago, but there wasn’t adequate funding available to undertake significant development.

McCully and Oliphant estimate approximately $3.1 million will be needed to get the property on-track for serious commercial and industrial development. The money is needed to clean up the site, provide vital infrastructure repairs and to hopefully develop a new rail spur to provide easy loading access to freight cars coming through Libby.

With a properly developed rail spur, McCully said, local manufacturers will be able to ship products more efficiently and cost-effectively. Tenants at the site, such as the finger-jointer and post and pole operation will be able to ship directly via rail instead of trucking their products to the rail spur at Eureka, then waiting for the next available train.

Two major obstacles, apart from funding, are hanging over the port property, the active Superfund listing and the litigation with regard to Stinger Welding.

At issue are ownership of the nearly nine acres of land on which Stinger built a 100,000-square-foot construction facility in 2010-2011, along with ownership of seven industrial cranes used at the plant.

Stinger built bridges at the facility for a time before the death of Chief Executive Officer Carl Douglas in December 2012. The company closed the Libby plant in early 2013 and subsequently declared bankruptcy.

Bad blood between the Port Authority and Stinger preceded the company founder’s death. Alleging breach of contract and unfair dealings, the Port Authority filed suit in October 2012 in an attempt to void the transfer of the deed for the property. A second suit, since consolidated with the first, was filed in November 2013 after Stinger began removing the cranes from the facility.

The litigation has hung like a dark cloud over the property, the employees and the board of directors of the Port Authority.

“It’s a distraction,” said board member Russ Barnes. “It has taken up so much time and so much energy of the board members.”

The site’s presence on the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Priority, or Superfund, List is also a hindrance. It’s an obstacle Oliphant hopes to overcome shortly, even though the agency is expected to be in active remedial operations in Libby for another three to five years.

Oliphant said she hopes to petition the agency to remove the port property from the list independently of the remainder of the sites in the county. Once the site is removed from the Superfund listing, Oliphant said a number of redevelopment grants and investment opportunities become available, it also makes the property much more attractive to potential tenants.

Oliphant said it is impossible to speculate on the timeline for overcoming either or those obstacles, so the focus at the moment is gathering information and preparing for the opportunities as they arise.

“It’s important right now to get it to a place where everyone is communicating on the same page,” she said. “We can’t collaborate without that understanding, and it’s a monumental task.”