On a pleasant mid-October morning, Patrick Lumber’s Brad Mehl and Terry Haddix walk the grounds located just outside of Philomath to check on the construction progress of a new hardwood sawmill.
The clear blue skies and sun shining overhead seemed appropriate for this longtime player in Oregon’s logging industry — almost symbolic of what appears to be a bright future for the company. Last summer, Patrick Lumber received a $1 million community wood grant through the U.S. Forest Service to expand its facility and bring online the only commercial-sized hardwood mill in Oregon that isn’t cutting alder as its primary product.
Gallery: Patrick Lumber (Fall 2024)
A collection of photos from the Patrick Lumber facility located near Philomath as seen in October 2024.
Alder, readily available in the Pacific Northwest, is a popular hardwood for use in furniture and cabinetry.
“Part of the reason that we’re not exclusively alder is that it opens us up to create a market for logs and species that would otherwise be a cost center for the loggers or the landowners or there would be less in the forests as potential wildfire fuel,” explained Haddix, Patrick Lumber operations manager. “So we’ll be bringing in maple, chinquapin, madrone, all those other things that would just be left behind. Somebody has to pay to pull it out and then you have to find somebody to buy it and there just isn’t that big of a market.”
In all, there could be up to a dozen or so hardwood species, including multiple types of oak, that could be processed commercially into lumber.
“We’re hoping to position ourselves to sort of create those markets,” Haddix said. “They’ll be substantially smaller than alder, of course, but still a market is a market and an outlet is better than none … an outlet’s better than wildfire fuel.”
Patrick Lumber hopes to have the hardwood sawmill operating this coming spring, possibly by April or May.
“There were a lot of hoops to jump through in the application process,” Haddix said. “We had to explain how our resource base would affect employment in underserved or underprivileged areas, and how we would contribute to forest health because of the species that we’re going to be using in here.”
Patrick Lumber is currently in the process of finalizing a grant application with hopes of securing more federal funds to go toward the Phase 2 costs of the new mill.
The company was founded in 1915 in Portland and manufactures and trades wood products with worldwide distribution. Its core products include Douglas fir, western red cedar, southern yellow pine, hemlock and yellow cedar. The company relocated after purchasing the former Mary’s River Lumber Co. property near Philomath in 2016.
Patrick Lumber isn’t going into the new hardwood venture blind. The company has been operating a Wood-Mizer portable sawmill on site to test the process, which includes drying the lumber. After finding success, the company moved forward.
“Once we brought (adviser) Dennis Sanders on, he’s worked with Northwest hardwoods, and part of the package deal that we brought him on with was the understanding that he would help us expand into hardwoods,” Haddix said.
Incidentally, the portable mill is located on property that was adjacent to Mary’s River Lumber and later acquired by Patrick Lumber after a federal investigation led to arrests related to an illegal marijuana-growing operation.
Continuing on with the mid-October tour of the property, Haddix and Mehl, who is Patrick Lumber Manufacturing’s president, were joined by Natalie Heacock, who this past August became the first woman and youngest ever to be elected president of the Patrick Lumber Co.’s board of directors.
The relocation to Philomath
In all, Patrick Lumber purchased between 30 and 40 acres between 2016 and 2017 in stages. Dave Halsey, the company’s chief executive officer, was instrumental in finding the property.
“In 2016, we were looking for drying capacity because up until that point, we had mostly outsourced all the drying to other plants up and down the West Coast — Canada and the U.S. — and we weren’t getting enough,” said Halsey, who has been in the lumber business since 1984 and at Patrick Lumber since 1997. “There were a number of mill closures back then like there are now and so the drying capacity of the mills were shrinking. And so we looked at three locations closely.”
The other two possibilities for locating the plant were at Boardman in the Columbia River Gorge area or at Cave Junction in the southern section of state not far from the California border.
“We really liked this one because it’s close to Oregon State and there’s a tie-in with forestry,” Halsey said. “I went to Oregon State, some of my partners did, and so we started negotiating on this and got it from the Avery family, and that was just this 8 acres down here to start with. And since we got our foot in the door, we bought these other three properties and so we’re up to 40 acres.”
Depending on seasonal needs, the plant employs between 20 and 35 people, Haddix said, and sometimes goes to two shifts based on demand.
One of those on site is Joe Chagnon, who during the morning tour could be seen working in the distance. He had formerly worked for Mary’s River Lumber — he started there out of high school — and stayed on through the Patrick Lumber acquisition. Chagnon apparently had intentions to retire but still works on site several days during the week, Haddix said, later adding that he plans to truly retire at the end of this year.
“I would say our employees have really leaned into what we’re doing so it’s been easy to find good employees and build,” Halsey said when asked about the advantages of the Philomath site. “They like to build and we’ve just been expanding with the markets that we have.”
The walk ended where it began, at the company’s impressive Timber Hall, a 6,345-square-foot structure completed in the spring of 2023 that serves as office and event space.
“We’re clearly here for the long haul,” Haddix said. “We’re investing a lot of money in this property and we want this to be sort of a community resource as well and so far, it’s gotten a really good reception. We’ve had a number of groups up here.”
A lot of work remains at the Patrick Lumber site. For example, looking out over the property from the outdoor covered deck of Timber Hall, Haddix mentioned an ecosystem restoration project that is planned to put in native grasses and flowers. Some hemlock, cedar and Douglas fir trees, she added, will also be planted in specific areas “to further connect us to those core species.”
“We’ve used all of those in Timber Hall,” Haddix added. “The floor is Doug Fir, the coffee nook is hemlock, the window and door frames are cedar and outside, the deck is Alaska yellow cedar. The platting on this building we don’t do much in but it’s reclaimed redwood from a bridge in northern california.”
The company believes it has formed a strong bond with Philomath and the immediate area following the relocation.
“The more time we’ve spent here, the more we integrate ourselves into the community,” Haddix said. “The culture here, it’s very lumber friendly. … The more investment we make in this property, I think it’s more of an illustration to the community at large that we’re not going anywhere and we truly want to be partners in the success of the local area. It’s been a great synergy for us.”