Oppenlander Field in West Linn. (Jonathan House/West Linn Tidings)

After four years of question marks, offers have officially been made for the Oppenlander property in the Rosemont Ridge neighborhood of West Linn. 

The West Linn-Wilsonville School District received three bids for the Oppenlander property at the bid deadline of 2 p.m., Thursday, July 10.

The West Linn-Wilsonville School Board voted to place the 10-acre property on the open real estate market in May. The school board set an asking price of $7.875 million for the property. 

The three bids were Noise Development for $7 million, Icon Construction for $7.875 million and the Lennar Corporation for $7.875 million. 

The open bidding process is the next chapter in a contentious process for managing the 10 acres of land. Used by the community as public parks and sports fields, the property has been owned by the school district since the 1970s. In 2021 they  signalled interest in a sale, causing the City of West Linn and the school district to come together for a deal. 

This ultimately led to the 2022 lawsuit filed by  the school district against the city over a valuation of the land which was decided in favor of the district last August. Both sides have expressed interest in finding an outcome that maintains some portion of the land as park space, although the district said it intends to use $1.2 million of the sale proceeds for two new baseball or softball fields at Riverside High School. 

Prior to the May sale announcement, the district sent a purchase-and-sale agreement to the city, asking for the full valued price of $7.875 million. The city countered the district’s proposal with a plan for a private-public partnership with developer Icon Construction. 

At the time of the sale announcement, the city said it didn’t have funding for the full $7.875 million and that voters had only approved $3.5 million in a bond vote to purchase Oppenlander back in 2022. 

The West Linn-Wilsonville School Board will vote on the three bids at their next meeting on Monday, Aug. 18.