City considering purchase of Twin City Foods site

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The Lewiston city council is considering buying and improving the Twin City Foods site to make it more attractive to development.

The prospect has come up multiple times over the 12 years since the pea processing plant was razed, but city officials and the various councils were hoping that a private developer would come in and do the expensive pre-development work itself.

The recent decision by the Ginn Group of Vancouver, Wash., not to go forward with the construction of multifamily residential buildings with ground-floor commercial space has brought the issue back to the council. That pre-development work includes upgrades to electrical, water and sewer, and the entire parcel needs to be replated into city blocks and streets. The soil at the site is also problematic, and any large buildings would require expensive foundation upgrades.

Councilors spent more than an hour discussing the 11.5 acre property in closed executive session at the end of their regular Monday night meeting. When they emerged, Councilor John Pernsteiner made a motion to have a staff presentation on the potential purchase at the Dec. 6 work session, to be followed by a vote on whether to buy at the Dec. 13 regular meeting.

The most recently disclosed list price for the property was $2.5 million in November 2019. (Lewiston Tribune)

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