Camas School District unveils plans for Leadbetter campus

The Camas School District has unveiled its vision for the former Underwriters Laboratories (UL) site near Skyridge Middle School, which it purchased for $11.5 million in 2019.

During a recent open house on the 58-acre site, community members stood near the 115,000-square-foot former UL building to view displays showing the school district’s three-phase plan for what it calls its “Leadbetter campus” — a nod to the site’s location off of Northwest Leadbetter Drive in Camas.

“Ultimately, it’s going to be a school someday, but we don’t need to build a school now,” Jasen McEathron, the school district’s director of business services, told about two dozen community members who attended the district’s Leadbetter campus open house on Tuesday, Sept. 10. “The location lends itself to a place the community can use … but we don’t want to wait (to develop community amenities) until we need to build a new school because that’s a long runway — eight to 10 years, if not longer.”

Instead, McEathron and the district’s consultants told the community members, the district plans to approach its Leadbetter campus redevelopment plans in three phases.

The first phase will, district leaders hope, surplus 9 acres on the site’s eastern edge near the intersection of Northwest Leadbetter Drive and Northwest Lake Road, and sell the property on the open market for a possible mixed-use development that could someday offer housing mixed with commercial uses such as retail shops, cafes and eateries.

The district’s Phase 1 plans show development standards that would include 75-foot setbacks; protection for the site’s mature trees; a three-story maximum building height; pedestrian connections to the community; retail shops with “outdoor community space;” and prohibitions on developments that include gas stations or “nuisance” businesses. The proposed mixed-use, multifamily housing development — which will still need to pass through the city of Camas’ zoning-change process and find an interested developer — could offer up to 222 housing units and between 10,000 and 20,000 square feet of commercial space and associated parking as well as pedestrian pathways that connect to the Leadbetter campus.

Phase 1 also includes plans to build a new road through the surplus property, which would connect the campus entrance off Northwest Leadbetter Drive to Northwest Lake Road and offer parking for the future development.

The district plans to use the money it raises from the property sale to help fund the campus’ final two phases.

“Each phase is kind of dependent on the others,” McEathron told community members at the Sept. 10 open house, adding that district leaders are hoping the land sale will help “make modest site improvements to the Leadbetter campus in the near future without burdening the community with more bonds.”

In a handout to community members, the district said “revenue derived from a surplus sale will help fund recreational/sports facilities for students and the community at large.”

If all goes according to plan, the second phase of the Leadbetter campus development would create recreational and sports opportunities for Camas students and the community on the bulk of the 58-acre site.

According to the presentation shown to community members on Sept. 10, some of the proposed Phase 2 amenities include soccer, baseball, softball and mixed-use fields; a playground; an amphitheater; and interconnected walking trails.

The final phase, Phase 3, would, according to the district’s handout: “build a future (secondary) school and finalize site development that will serve students and the community for generations to come.”

In 2023, consultants with the Educational Service District 112’s Construction Services Group encouraged Camas School District leaders to consider the former UL campus and the district’s Skyridge Middle School campus, located at 2600 N.W. Lake Road, west of the UL site, as “one entity.”

The combined UL site and Skyridge site make up the nearly 90-acre “Leadbetter campus” that currently houses the Skyridge Middle School; the 30-year-old 115,000-square-foot corporate office building that operated as UL offices and research facilities from 1994 to 2019; 227 parking spaces for passenger vehicles; a stormwater management system; and 3,200 linear feet of paved roadway. The former UL site carries a business park zoning designation, which does allow for most recreational, educational, library, auditorium and commercial uses but will need to change to mixed-use zoning on the 9 acres of surplus land, before the school district can proceed with its three-phase redevelopment plan.

“The district is seeking a rezone of the (surplus) property to the highest and best use category of mixed use, then leveraging proceeds from the sale to help fund improvements in Phase 2,” consultants with LSW Architects and MacKay Sposito stated in an informational handout distributed to community members at the Sept. 10 open house.

District leaders said last week that development ideas stemmed from a collaborative effort that included input from the city of Camas, the Port of Camas-Washougal, the Columbia River Economic Development Council, local employers, athletic groups, the Camas Booster Club, student groups, district leaders and “the community at large, with an emphasis on direct engagement with neighboring property owners.”

In May 2023, consultants told Camas School District officials that the cost of renovating the former UL building, which is 30 years old and “in need of some upgrades,” according to Heidi Hansen, with ESD 112’s Construction Services Group, would likely cost between $46 million and $70 million.

“The longer you wait, the more expensive it gets,” Hansen told Camas School Board members during their May 4, 2023, workshop, adding that the remodeling figures would likely increase to $58.3 million for a minor remodel and $88.3 million for a major remodel by 2028.

McEathron said last week that although the district is planning to open a new school — most likely a new high school — on the Leadbetter campus in the future, the district likely has at least another decade before that plan comes into view.

According to information provided at the recent open house: “Phase 3 is to build a future school and finalize site development that will serve students and the community for generations to come.”