The Treasure Valley Reload Center is a rail project in Nyssa aimed to help farmers ship their produce to other markets. Projected to open in 2020, the center has faced a number of setbacks due to permitting and financial issues. Now, the expected operator of the project, Americold, has announced they will be removing themselves from the project. Pat Caldwell is a reporter for the Malheur Enterprise. He joins us to share more on the rail center’s latest issues and what the future of the project looks like without an operator.
This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We turn now to the latest setback for the proposed Treasure Valley Reload Center. That’s a rail project in Nyssa in far Eastern Oregon aimed to help farmers, especially onion farmers, get their produce to market. It was projected to open in 2020 but has faced a series of permitting and financial problems. Now, the expected operator of this project has announced that they are pulling out. Pat Caldwell is a reporter for the Malheur Enterprise who’s been following this story for years and he joins us now with the latest. Pat, welcome to the show.
Pat Caldwell: Thank you, Dave. Glad to be here.
Miller: It’s great to have you on. Can you just remind us first what the point of this rail project is?
Caldwell: Well, to get to the bottom line and get all the other stuff out of the way, the point is to be able to move agricultural products, chiefly onions, to certain Pacific places, in the East and Midwest. The idea for the Reload Center was to build an industrial complex around it. And that would, number one, allow farmers to get their onions on the train cars for faster and cheaper shipment. But another key to the thing was that it would be kind of an anchor for this major industrial development in Malheur County to bring in lots of jobs.
Miller: What kinds of setbacks have there been?
Caldwell: Well, there’s been quite a few Dave. They’ve been behind schedule on their construction. They’ve been over budget. There are lots and lots of delays. As I think you probably already know, in 2017 Oregon lawmakers earmarked about $26 million for just the Center. And from that point on, schedules have been missed, construction stalled, and more importantly the word was that $26 million would take care of everything. And since then, the project is way past $26 million. It’s in the low $40 millions now in terms of cost and the project is stalled. As you know, the operator that was to run the facility, Americold, was considered a linchpin in the whole project decided to pull out in July because they labeled the project as not financially viable.
Miller: So, you’ve actually said that Americold, which is an Atlanta-based company, had struck a sweet deal for themselves. Among other things, the lead said that if they operated this multimillion dollar publicly funded facility for 20 years, they could buy it for a dollar. What does it say about the future of this project that they walked away from such a seemingly good deal?
Caldwell: Well, it’s certainly not a good thing for the project. And I’m not gonna get into what my opinion would be, but I think that they not only had that $1 part of the deal. But they were set to pay rent at a fraction of what is standard on the facility, once they began to operate it. So they pretty much had as good a deal as you could probably possibly get and they’ve decided to leave.
And so that leaves a lot of things up in the air, as I said earlier. It stalls the project. About the best thing that could be said at this point is that they have a new project manager who’s an attorney here in Ontario. Her name is Shawna Peterson. And she seems like somebody that’s a classic troubleshooter, a fixer and she’s now the project manager and working to get through all these challenges the project certainly has. So that is really good news. But that’s about the only piece of good news right now.
Miller: Although you reported that a few members of the Board that spearheading this project are trying to put a positive spin on this development, what seems like a major blow. They’re basically saying that the relationship with Americold wasn’t perfect. But you’ve also pointed out that Americold was the only company that showed interest in this project four years ago when it was first announced. And that was before all these delays and challenges. What would it take to attract a new operator for this, as yet, unbuilt project?
Caldwell: Well, that’s kind of the $64 million-dollar question, isn’t it? I think the Board and the officials that are behind this project are trying to answer that very question. I think it’s a challenge because they’re going to have to, at the bare minimum, meet the same deal that Americold had. I would think if I was coming in and I was a company like Americold, I would at least want the same kind of deal that Americold had. And that’s a pretty sweet deal. So, I think that’s the challenge they’re facing now.
They’re looking for a way to attract somebody to come in and take over for Americold. What that is gonna take, I don’t know. I think it’s going to take a lot of thought and planning by these people. And they did try to put, as you said, a positive spin on it, which I guess I can understand. But they talked about how there’s sometimes when something really bad occurs, there’s opportunity in that.
Miller: A door closes and a window opens?
Caldwell: Exactly. And that may very well be true. I don’t know. I just know that, based on our reporting, Americold is a major, major shipper and was considered, at the time, to be a huge, huge win for the whole development project. And they’ve bailed.
Miller: Before I say goodbye, I just wanna go over something that confused me. Because you talked to some onion growers, for your most recent article about this, who said that Americold pulling out might not be that big a deal to them because they are fine with the trucking options that they have right now. It really just made me wonder, if that’s the case, then who’s pushing hard for this project that’s going to cost tens of millions of dollars? If the status quo is fine, then why go through all the trouble for this new rail project?
Caldwell: Well, that’s a good question. I think there’s some political impetus to this. I don’t know if you remember or not, but this whole plan was crafted by a former Representative Cliff Bentz, who’s now a U.S. Congressman. And locally, I think with the County Commission, the county court actually, they want to see it getting up and going. But right now, from what we could determine, some of the onion growers that I talked to said, and it all kind of revolves around volume and how big the onion crop is.
And frankly, right now, there are not the volumes that would be necessary for them to want to go look someplace else. And there’s an ample supply, I shouldn’t say ample, that’s not right, there is a supply of trucks. So some of these guys are looking at it like, “Well I’m not gonna be shipping huge amounts of onions to begin with and the onions I am gonna be shipping, the trucks that are available now can handle it.” And then what I was told is even if it was built, even if it’s up and running and it’s going, they would have to look at a sequence of things before they’d even sign on, including volume, how much is gonna be shipped, the prices, a sequence of things.
So it’s just not a guarantee that every onion grower in the valley will immediately shift over if this thing is built. So back to your original question of who’s pushing this? I would say that there’s some political pushing. I would say that the local leaders, some elected officials that really want it to happen and I think that’s where you’re seeing the push.
Miller: Pat, thanks very much.
Caldwell: Dave, thank you, appreciate it.
Miller: Pat Caldwell is a reporter for the Malheur Enterprise.
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