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Pacific Fence and Wire Company filed a lawsuit Dec. 13 in Multnomah County Court, alleging that Ross Island Sand & Gravel and Robert Pamplin Jr. failed to pay a $153,000 bill.
According to the lawsuit, the bill stems from work Pacific Fence and Wire began last year to place a security fence around the perimeter of the shuttered headquarters of Ross Island Sand & Gravel at 4315 SE McLoughlin Blvd. Ross Island Sand & Gravel, a subsidiary of the R.B. Pamplin Corp., closed its operations there in 2019 and sold off its distinctive fleet of yellow concrete mixers.
The property’s location, just south of the Ross Island Bridge, makes it valuable, but its proximity to the Springwater Corridor made the fallow site attractive to campers who have long occupied sites along the east bank of the Willamette River. Thus the fence.
Last December, documents attached to the lawsuit show, Pacific Fence and Wire presented Ross Island Sand & Gravel with a bid to install 2,500 feet of barbed-wire topped fencing and a series of gates. Ross Island later amended the contract twice, bringing the total cost to $370,493.
Pacific Fence and Wire alleges Ross Island Sand & Gravel never completed payment.
“On or about April 12, 2023, RISG paid Pacific the sum of $217,898 on the agreement,” the lawsuit says, “leaving the sum of $152,595 due and owing as of August 9, 2023. On August 9, 2023, Pacific sent RISG an invoice for the remaining balance due under the agreement (i.e., $152,595.00) to which RISG did not object, nor did it pay.”
Pacific Fence and Wire initially filed a contractor’s lien in August, as WW previously reported. When that didn’t generate payment, the company filed its lawsuit.
Ross Island Sand & Gravel leased the headquarters site to Portland Parks & Recreation beginning last September. The lease runs for 10 years beginning at $48,000 per month and escalating annually. (The parks bureau uses the site as a work yard and equipment storage site.)
Another unpaid creditor, the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 701, told WW earlier this month that it is garnishing that payment to collect on a $368,000 judgment against R.B. Pamplin Corp. for unpaid benefits for Ross Island Sand & Gravel workers.
Although creditors have sued various Pamplin entities for nonpayment in recent years, the Pacific Fence and Wire lawsuit is unusual in that it names Robert B. Pamplin Jr. individually, rather than than simply Pamplin corporate entities. That’s because, the lawsuit explains, Pamplin, 82, has a personal ownership interest in the property through a family trust.
Pamplin, the chairman of R.B. Pamplin Corp., is a noted philanthropist whose company owns 24 Oregon newspapers, including the Portland Tribune, as well as Ross Island Sand & Gravel, Columbia Empire Farms and Mt. Vernon Mills, a chain of Southern textile mills. In recent years, Pamplin, the trustee of his company’s pension fund, has sold dozens of pieces of R.B. Pamplin real estate to the pension fund, in apparent violation of the federal laws that govern pension funds. The new lawsuit is just the latest example of financial strains on Pamplin operating companies.
Pamplin Corp. officials did not respond to a request for comment.