Commissioners at the Port of Ridgefield have authorized the repurchase of 10.5 acres of industrial-zoned land at S. 11th Street in Ridgefield it sold just a year ago. The repurchase price is the original sales price of $1,271,952 plus $150,000 in pre-development costs incurred by the seller – costs the port says it would have had to pay for eventually anyway.
ROK Ridgefield Industrial LLC, whose managing member is Elie Kassab, president of Vancouver-based Prestige Development, purchased the property from the port in 2014 with plans to construct a 100,000-square-foot building on the site. However, when prospective tenants failed to execute lease agreements, Kassab expressed an interest in selling the property back to the port.
In a press release, Port of Ridgefield CEO Brent Grening said that if the port was in the financial position it currently enjoys, with recent financing capacity secured through Banner Bank, it would not have sold the S. 11th Street property in the first place.
“We didn’t want to sell that parcel, but we needed the funds from the sale last year to develop the road to our other property at S. 11th Street,” he said.
“With demand shifting to larger industrial building sites, we now have the opportunity to get this property back and combine it with our current project on the north side of 11th Street,” Grening added. “This puts us in an improved strategic market position to attract a strong employer.”
The repurchase agreement is expected to be executed by the end of the month.
