Olympia City Council approves spending for work on former landfill

By Matt Batcheldor | The Olympian • Published July 17, 2008

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OLYMPIA – Forty years after the city closed its old landfill on prime property at Cooper Point Drive and Black Lake Boulevard, it still is trying to sell the undeveloped, environmentally contaminated land.

The issue resurfaced Tuesday before the Olympia City Council when council members preliminarily approved spending $50,000 for environmental work and legal expenses related to the site. The council could give final approval to the spending during its meeting July 22.

The old dump is about 12 acres, and trash burned there day and night from the mid-1950s until its closing in 1968. As far back as the early 1990s, groundwater from a well at the south edge of a refuse pile at the site exceeded state cleanup standards for lead, arsenic and chromium.

The land remains tied up in court after an agreement to sell the property to a Tacoma developer for $1.17 million went sour in 2005. A retail center had been planned for the site that could have been home to a Lowe's home-improvement warehouse.

Southridge Properties LLC signed an agreement to buy the land, but the deal never closed because of a dispute over whether a building of more than 100,000 square feet needed special City Council approval, City Attorney Tom Morrill said. So Southridge sued the city to force it to sell the property.

"At this point we're still hoping to resolve the litigation and sell it," Morrill said. He said the city would prefer to have the buyer do environmental cleanup on the site.

The city continues to incur some environmental costs by monitoring wells there. In the city's counterclaim, it denies there was an enforceable contract between Southridge and the city, and "if the trier of fact determines there was an enforceable contract, then Olympia alleges that Southridge has breached said contract."

Eric Marifield, an attorney for Southridge, said the litigation was put on hold about a year ago so the parties could talk about a settlement. He said a recent round of talks was "promising."

It's the latest of several failed attempts to sell the property.

Thompson Properties bought the site in 1982, finance director Jane Kirkemo said in a 1999 Olympian story. The developer sold half of the site to Top Food & Drug but still owed the city $750,000 for the land when he filed for bankruptcy, Kirkemo said. The city regained possession of the land in 1994.

The City Council agreed to sell the dump to The Home Depot for a store in 1999 — another deal that went nowhere. The $50,000 that the council preliminarily approved to pay for ongoing dump costs would come from The Washington Center for the Performing Arts Endowment Fund. That's because the fund was created after the dump originally was sold. The $50,000 will be repaid and additional money from the eventual sale of the dump property also would go to the fund, Morrill said.

City Councilman Jeff Kingsbury said the money would be paid back with interest, and he's OK with the deal.