The University has one more piece of property to add to its inventory — the Williams’ Bakery site.
Allan Price, vice president for University Advancement, announced that the University had finalized the site’s purchase Wednesday afternoon.
“It’s a win for the University, it’s a win for the bakery and a win for the community,” Price said.
The University will not be using the site, located at the corner of 13th Avenue and Moss Street, until at least the middle of 2006 in order to allow the bakery time to relocate, Price said.
The purchase price of the bakery is $22,231,816, enough to cover the cost of relocating the bakery to the Glenwood area between Eugene and Springfield. The University acquired the approval of the Legislative Emergency Board on Jan. 7 to use state-backed bonds for the purchase.
The bakery provides a large number of well-paying jobs, and part of the University’s goal was to purchase the property without negatively impacting the employees of Williams’ Bakery, Price said.
Had the purchase price not covered the cost of the bakery’s relocation, “it’s very possible those jobs would have moved out of the Eugene/Springfield area and maybe out of Oregon,” Price said.
Price said the announcement is in no way related to the construction of a
basketball arena.
“If we’re going to build a new arena, that will certainly be the site of it, but there’s no connection between buying the bakery and saying that we’re ready to do the arena,” Price said.
However, the purchase does allow the University to proceed with the process of determining whether building an arena is feasible for the University in the near future, Price said.
“It puts us in the condition where we can continue to assess the feasibility given that we now have our number one site available to build on,” Price said.
Price said three additional properties near the bakery — a medical building, a 7-11 store and a video store — would have to be purchased in order to build an arena, and the University has had “a very limited amount of contact” with the owners of those sites, Price said.
“We don’t have any intention to acquire those additional properties unless and until we know an arena is going to happen,” Price said.
The bakery’s decision to relocate to Glenwood comes just months after voters approved an urban renewal district in the area, aimed at stimulating development in the area.
Price said the relocation of the bakery to Glenwood will only add to what the urban renewal district is designed to do and is another reason why the purchase is so beneficial to the community.
“It’s very rare that three months after a community passes such an initiative you would have a capital investment of this size immediately stimulating the development of that district,” Price said.
The bakery’s relocation will also benefit the company as a whole, Price said, because it will have new facilities rather than the nearly 100-year-old factory located at the site now owned by the University.
“It leaves the bakery with a brand new facility, modern, with plenty of room for expansion and with a lot of hope that ultimately they will grow the jobs,” Price said.
University President Dave Frohnmayer and United States Bakery CEO Bob Albers also commended the process through which the site was purchased.
“We are very pleased that we have been able to complete this arrangement, which will make an important piece of property available for the University’s use while preserving a vital economic asset for our community,” Frohnmayer said in a news release.
“We were always hopeful that an arrangement could be made which would be a win for the community, a win for the University and a win for United States Bakery,” Albers said in the release. “We have achieved that goal.”
Price said the University has been interested in obtaining the site
for many years because of its
obvious value to the campus community and its close proximity to the University.
“That’s essentially the University’s front door now,” Price said. “It really is an important piece of property to the long-term development of the University.”
Price emphasized how happy everyone involved in the purchase is because of the array of benefits that can result from the University owning the site and Williams’ Bakery relocating to Glenwood.
The University has arrangements with the bakery that allow the company to stay at the location until a new bakery is constructed to allow its production schedule to continue without interruption, Price said.
“This is the best kind of deal because there’s benefits to everyone who’s been involved in the deal right along the way, including the entire community,” Price said.