HASSO HERING

The vacant lot at 109 Burkhart St. S,E. was photographed — again — on Aug. 1, 2023.

The lot on the southeast corner of First Avenue and Burkhart Street in Albany is an interesting property, not least because of the memories it holds for one former Albany girl.

The parcel is at 109 Burkhart St. S.E., between First Avenue on one side and the tracks of the Union Pacific and Portland & Western railroads on the other.

The corner is on one of my bike routes through town. I wrote about this property in May 2019, speculating whether this residentially zoned site of a former oil company tank farm would ever again have a use.

The story caught the eye of Sadie Collin, of Salem, who reminded me of it recently.

“My dad used to own the Richfield oil distributor,” she wrote to me. “His office was on Burkhart.”

She wondered if the property was still the same. “It had a lot of memories for me and my sisters,” she wrote. “I wish I had a photo of the bulk plant. My sisters and I had so many fun days playing around the tanks and waving to the man in (the) caboose.”

Along with cabooses on passing freights, the tanks are long gone, and so are the other structures that used to sit on that lot.

In the 1970s the Arco distributor at First and Burkhart was a division of Cummings Transfer, according to ads in the local paper.

Linn County tax records show that Cummings Transfer Co. sold the parcel to Jackson Food Stores in 2006 for $250,000. The following year, Jackson Food Stores sold it for $600,000 to Carson Oil Co. of Portland, which still owns it.

Considering the most recent sales price,  I wondered why the Linn County tax assessor now shows the real market value as only $53,000 and the assessed or taxable value as a mere $25,160.

Mark Wilkinson of the county tax department explained that the 2007 purchase price included the tank farm, which was dismantled in 2011 along with all the other structures.

Does the current value of the bare land reflect any remaining contamination from the tank farm?

“We do not have any documentation in our files or from DEQ that indicates the site is contaminated,” Wilkinson said by email. “The current value reflects the residential zoning, irregular shape of the parcel, and location next to mainline RR tracks.”

The size of the lot is 12,750 square feet. Neighboring parcels also backing up to the railroad tracks are much smaller and have had houses on them since the 1940s. One house was built as recently as 1999.

So maybe there’s a chance that 109 Burkhart will also eventually be redeveloped for housing as the zoning suggests. (hh)