Tumwater brewery owner attends real estate forum. Here’s what he had to say

The owner of the property that used to produce Olympia beer — property that has sat unused for the past 22 years — said he was encouraged by what he heard from Tumwater officials on Thursday during a local real estate forum.

Chandulal Patel was among the more than 200 people who gathered for the Thurston Economic Development Council’s real estate forum at the Lacey campus of South Puget Sound Community College.

Patel, who has owned the brewery property for about 10 years, did not address the crowd on Thursday, but he did sit and listen to Tumwater City Administrator Lisa Parks, who gave a presentation on the brewery and the city’s efforts to change the trajectory of the area.

“I think the brewery presentation shows that now the city is wanting to do something, and that makes me feel good as a developer,” said Patel, adding that it also sends the right message to other potential developers, too.

Transforming the brewery property faces a myriad of challenges and Parks enumerated them: potential environmental contamination, no domestic water (and therefore no water flow to fight fires), no electricity and the Deschutes River flows through the site, so there’s critical area and flood plain issues that need to be addressed.

Given all that Tumwater has to figure out, the city is going to embark on an option available to them under the state Environmental Policy Act (SEPA). It’s called a planned action environmental impact statement (EIS).

“It allows the community to visualize what the build-out scenario may be for the area, because we’re required to actually identify and evaluate these build-out scenarios and alternatives and to actually choose a preferred outcome,” Parks said during her presentation. “It also helps us to understand the type and extent of environmental contamination so we can develop the cleanup actions that not only support, but possibly even fulfill, some of the site redevelopment needs.”

Of interest to potential developers of the brewery site is this: “They no longer have to do an individual, site-specific SEPA analysis,” Parks said.

What’s next for the city’s planned EIS?

“We’re currently in the initial phase of the project, which will take us into mid-2026,” said Parks. “Our focus right now is to develop a specific scope, schedule, cost estimate and funding strategy in order to be able to complete the full planned action EIS process, and it will also include some additional initial regional collaboration and community engagement activities based on available funding.

“Our next step would be to actually launch into the full plan action EIS process, and once launched, we would expect that would take approximately 12 months,” she said.

Although Patel praised what he heard, he wishes the city would work faster and be willing to ease up a little on regulations when working with developers.

Patel lives in Southern California and develops hotels, he said. When he originally bought the property, his vision was to bring a boutique hotel to the area.

“People could enjoy the history of the beer-making story, as well as enjoy a boutique hotel that overlooks the river and waterfall. So that was my vision,” he said.

What is his vision today?

“I’m tired,” he said. “It’s taken so long to get things done and many years have gone by.”

He also mentioned the challenge of dealing with people who try to access the site, and the oil that needed to be cleaned up after it spilled into the Deschutes River and ultimately wound up in Capitol Lake.

In early 2019, a transformer on the brewery property was damaged by vandals and spilled oil containing a low concentration of PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, which can accumulate in bodies of water and reach harmful levels in fish, The Olympian previously reported.

Tumwater Development LLC — Patel’s company — later agreed to a $2.3 million settlement with the state because of the spill.

“I do lot of community work, so I love the community, and I wanted to make sure that we are responsible people,” said Patel on Thursday. “So we, you know, contributed the money to, you know, clean up the issues.”

Asked if the brewery property was for sale, Patel replied with a refrain common to the real estate industry.

“Anything’s for sale at the right price,” he said.