This is the vacant land across from Adair’s City Hall the town council would like to see developed.
Meanwhile in another corner of the mid-valley, the city of Adair Village has an idea. It would like to have a “downtown.”
“Downtown” might sound like an unlikely concept for the bedroom community of about 1,300 about five miles west of North Albany.
A reader had heard something about Adair’s project and told me about it, so I checked it out.
According to information in the agendas and minutes of the Adair Village city council, the plan is to get commercial developers interested in a 5-acre parcel across the street from the town’s Community Building, which houses city offices.
The parcel of interest was owned by the federal government, which conveyed it to Benton County with a deed restriction as park land.
The town acquired the site from the county about two years ago and now wants to buy out the deed restriction and make the land available for economic development. The former gas station on the site is to be razed. The city also owns the four-plex of apartments on the site. Tenants rent the places month to month.
The city commissioned a Seattle firm to make an appraisal of the property. The firm’s report, included with the council’s February agenda, valued the land at $700,000.
Pat Hare, the city administrator, told me on March 31 that the government had accepted the town’s offer to buy out the park-use deed restriction, and the council is about to approve spending $700,000 from reserves to do so.
Adair is obviously growing. Just look at the sprawling Calloway Creek subdivision off Ryals Avenue.
The town is looking to keep expanding. It is working on plans to expand its “urban growth boundary” toward the south to take in more buildable land.
Hare also has plans to develop an urban renewal district “in conjunction with an architectural rendering of the downtown.” The concept so far calls for a mixed-use area, with buildings containing commercial space or offices on the ground floor and apartments above.
As these plans ripen and develop, you may not recognize the village a few years from now. (hh)
This story has been updated and corrected to include a current population for the town, among other things.
The Adair Village Community Building, which serves as city hall, across the street from the vacant land the city wants to see develop as a commercial downtown.
Hey, if they have a bar planned…then yupppie!
First build the infrastructure. The roads are inadequate, it is impossible to get off of Ryals Lane onto the highway during busy commute hours. Ryals lane is already crowded from traffic out of Calloway creek so the “city” if you want to call it that seems to have more on its plate now than it can handle. I am personally opposed to removing any more park land from the residents of Benton County. Once it is gone, there is no getting it back.
If Adair Village does experience a boom of growth and new housing development in the near future, with North Albany being just a few miles south, lets hope their morning and evening commuters heading to I-5 will chose to take one of N. Albany’s hardly used thru-roads (Scenic Dr, Gibson Hill Rd. > N. Albany Rd, or Springhill Dr.). I bet it would get the City of Albany’s Development team’s seal of approval since they strive to urbanize and unwild every inch of N. Albany all while adding the absolute bare minimum of needed infrastructure.
Independence has a park right in the middle of downtown. It would be great if Adair kept the property as park land and create a viable ‘downtown’ around it.
I’m still waiting to see the Camp Adair barracks open for the interpretive center. I volunteered years ago to be a docent – now I’m too infirm to pull that off *LOL