LOIs are in for Rest of Fairview Industrial Park

Two offers are in for the final 10 acres of Fairview Industrial Park, a former 300-acre parcel the city has been selling off to job generating companies since the 1980s, GlobeSt.com has learned.

Larry Glassock, the president of the Salem Economic Development Corp.(SEDCOR), isn’t revealing the names behind the offers, but tells GlobeSt the offers arrived in the past week and are for the full list price of $75,000 an acre. SEDCOR is marketing the property for the city.

The offers come just days after Tyco International’s conditional commitment to buy eight acres at the park, also at $75,000 an acre, for an assembly plant. The maker of printed circuit boards plans to build an 80,000-sf facility that can be expanded to more than 100,000 sf as the need arises, Jim O’Connor, Tyco’s director of Oregon operations, tells GlobeSt.

Fairview Industrial Park began life in the 1970s as 300 acres of surplus state property. The city, wanting new investment and jobs for the area, worked out a deal with the state in the late 1970s and early 1980s that essentially gave it control of the land.

A few parcels were sold off in the 1980s, says Glassock, but the majority of the land has been sold since 1995, when the region’s real estate industry began its recovery. The sales have resulted in companies investing upwards of $600 million in buildings and equipment, and 1,500 new jobs, Glassock said.

Other purchasers of Fairview Industrial Park land include Mitsubishi Silicon America, the largest owner with 75 acres, as well as Boise Cascade, PPG Industries, VoiceStream, Weyerhauser, Supra Products and Yamasa, the world’s second-largest supplier of soy sauce.