A partial view of the back of the massive Ball Corporation plant in Millersburg.
On Friday I took a bike ride around Millersburg, my first since November 2025 when I looked at the ongoing construction of Ball Corporation’s huge new plant to make aluminum cans.
Here’s the update: The Ball factory looks complete. So does the Timberlab factory farther west on the other side of the old Oregon Electric rail line.
Also complete: the city’s new Transition Parkway, a wide road connecting the Ball Corporation site with still undeveloped industrial land to the west.
And the “Conser Linear Park” is also done. It separates the parkway and industrial land on the south side from the residential neighborhood north of Conser Road.
Together, all of it amounts to a big step forward for this rapidly growing city of about 3,200 inhabitants.
The bike took me from the parking lot at City Hall across Conser Road and up the new Parkway, then west on Conser Road, across the Portland & Western rail line, and down the new paved avenue that serves as the entrance to the Timberlab plant, which for some reason the company calls Independence Hall.
On the way back, I went east on the 12-foot-wide and half-mile-long bike and walking path of Conser Linear Park.
Judging by the vehicles in their respective parking lots, both new factories had people working inside the buildings.
I could not find anybody inside the Ball plant’s open front door. A website on the packaging industry reports that the Millersburg plant “began making cans last month. Ball is targeting a full ramp-up in 2027.”
At Timberlab, the person I found said production of “mass timber” had not yet started.
I also stopped at the Mid-Willamette Valley Intermodal Center, opened in December 2022, where some shipping appears to be finally taking place. But that’s a story for another day. (hh)
Millersburg’s new Transition Parkway, with the Ball plant in the background.
The front of Timberlab’s plant is made of — what else — wood.
The lamp poles on the road to Independence Hall are made of laminated lumber as well.
The west end of Conser Linear Park.
One of the rocky seating areas along the half-mile-long linear park.
What do you mean a story for another day. Let’s hear about the intermodal Center that tge county commissioners wasted all kinds of tax payer money on.
Yes, I agree. That Intermodal Center is the grand-daddy boondoggle of all boondoggles.
I’m sure they are not off-loading containers from trucks onto rail cars there or we would have heard about it. The county would have made sure that made the evening news on TV and what is left of journalism which is mostly a few digital newspapers. And, Hasso would have written a blog article about it if the Intermodal Center was actually “intermodal-ing!”
It’s no shock that expansion of industry takes place in Millersburg. Wah Chang, Willamette Industries Paper Mill, Duraflake, and many other businesses are (or were in the case of the paper mill) in Millersburg. I didn’t realize until in May when I was attending a graveside funeral in Millersburg that the Millersburg City Limits starts just the other side of the Waverly Lake Park that runs north a fairly small way beyond the actual lake. So, there are many businesses in Millersburg starting right from the city limits line which abuts smack dab up to Albany city limits line. The paper mill started up in 1955 as Western Kraft (but was owned at that time by the people who formed Willamette Industries in 1967). In what we used to call “modern times,” it has always been more lucrative for manufacturing businesses not to have to deal with the leaders of the Albany government.
Albany government…..they still can’t decide on windows yet…lets flip a coin….again.
In my opinion, while Transition Parkway is a beautiful road, it is a totally unnecessary waste of $14,000,000. You heard that right… 14 million dollars. It is a road to nowhere, It doesn’t even serve the Ball Corporation. The way into the Ball Corporation is off of Old Salem Road onto a very short portion of Transition Parkway or from Castillo Drive off of Conser Road. The linear park alongside of Conser Road and the beautiful new Transition Parkway is filled with dead plants and an area that is supposed to be grass on a steep slope of the berm. When the grassy area actually starts growing grass, it will be very hard to maintain and mow as the grade is very steep. The new way that Conser Road comes into Transition Parkway and Woods Road is just plain dumb. Drive out that way and you will see what I mean. I do think both the Ball Corporation and the Timberlab plant are assets to Millersburg.
I agree 100%. A big waste of tax dollars, even if some of it was a grant. The lighting is way over done; the lawn will be hard to maintain. All of the industry that will be built in that area, and Ball, should have paid for this road and “park”. Smart growth is good growth. The city needs to start mandating that these factories put back into the community. Will we ever know what tax breaks they received?