At the McMinnville Chamber of Commerce luncheon today, Jody Christensen of the McMinnville Economic Development Partnership (MEDP), Ron Pomeroy of Planning Department, and Steve Wells of TrammellCrowCompany gave talks about the coming of new development.

MEDP did a study that showed that there is a need for and room for 800,000 sq ft of new development for Yamhill County to account for “retail leakage”, i.e., people traveling to other cities for goods and services. She has secured Governor’s Site Certification for an area behind Cascade Steel that will look very attractive to potential industrial businesses.

Ron Pomeroy gave a slide presentation showing the new ordinances for stores over 25,000 sq ft. The ordinance manuals he handed out highlighted the suggestions by Cool Mac.

Steve Wells spoke of how they have contacted “anchor stores” for the new development coming in by Linfield. When asked whether the new ordinances were prohibitive in contracting some of these anchor stores, he mentioned that he hoped to work with the planning commission in this regard.

The next McMinnville Planning Commission meeting is this Thursday, March 20, 6:30 at McMinnville School District offices, 1500 N Baker Street.

Trammel Corporation (75-acre Linfield development area) will be giving their input/opinions about the new Large Commercial Structure Ordinance. If you want to have your input/opinion heard, please join Duane and I in making a statement for yourselves and/or Cool Mac.

This may be the last public hearing on this matter before it goes before City Council.

See you there!

George Duvendack will be presenting some of the environmental work the local landfill has been doing including an update on their exciting energy production plans.