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Central Point mill comes down Mail Tribune / Drew Fleming S&B James Construction Co. worker Dave McClanahan guides down the last massive piece of roof from the Central Point Lumber Co. on Highway 99 Thursday. The roof has been sold and will be used to house hay bales. The lumber company shut down a year ago and is being dismantled to make way for a new buyer of the property. Property sold; parts of building will be used elsewhere By BUFFY POLLOCK CENTRAL POINT - All that will remain of Central Point Lumber by late August will be the ground on which it stood along North Pacific Highway. Jeff Remington, purchasing manager for parent company TreeSource, said the property tentatively had been sold and a deal was expected to close before Labor Day. "We've not signed papers yet, but looks like it's going to be a deal," he said. Remington was unable to release any details of the possible agreement, but said the property - zoned industrial - was being considered by a nearby development group. Parts of the old mill, which specialized in processing small-diameter logs into studs, likely will live on, becoming the framework for other structures. "Actual framing of those old mills are made of older timber which are valuable as a remanufactured product," said Dave Hill, executive vice president of the Southern Oregon Timber Industries Association. "That mill was built around or before World War II. I'm sure somebody purchased the framing lumber of the mill." Equipment from the mill was auctioned in April, with most being sold to other mills or scrap-metal dealers. "The process is in the cleanup stages," Remington said. "Scrap iron is being removed and the buildings are being leveled." The mill, which provided 89 full-time jobs, closed in August because of financial troubles. Central Point Lumber was one of several mills owned by TreeSource, which filed for bankruptcy twice in the 1990s. It has seen its share of owners over the past two decades, including Cheney Forest Products, Louisiana Pacific, Cornett Lumber and WTD Industries, which became TreeSource. It shut down twice in recent years before it closed for good a year ago. Hill said a decline in lumber prices and shrinking supplies of timber likely contributed to the closing of Central Point Lumber. "The income for the lumber they milled was not covering the cost to go get more material for doing business," he said. "They didn't have their own land base so had to go find it from various sellers." Buffy Pollock is a free-lance writer living in Medford. E-mail her at [email protected] . Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.