Threemile Canyon Farms is looking to add a new housing development west of Boardman for between 200 and 800 seasonal workers needed to grow more organic crops.

But first, Morrow County must approve a zoning change for the property on Tower Road south of Interstate 84. The land is currently zoned space age industrial, which does not allow seasonal farmworker housing as a permitted use. Instead, Threemile Canyon Farms wants land zoned for exclusive farm use, which would allow the project to move forward.

The Morrow County Planning Commission met May 24 to review the zoning request and continued that hearing for its next meeting on June 28. Planning director Carla McLane said the commission will make its recommendation to the county court, which has final say on the matter. The commission will meet at 7 p.m. at the Bartholomew Building in Heppner.

Threemile Canyon Farms is owned and operated by R.D. Offutt Company, which is working on a deal to buy 66 acres from the city of Boardman through its real estate branch — PROfuutt Limited Partnership — to build farmworker housing along the east side of Tower Road. The property is outside of the city’s urban growth boundary, across from the Boardman Airport.

Organic farming has become more of an emphasis at the farm in recent years, with 7,800 acres now in organic peas, corn, onions, carrots and other vegetables. General manager Marty Myers has said they hope to expand to more than 12,000 organic acres in the next two years.

To do that, the farm will need to bring on a larger seasonal workforce. In a previous interview, Myers compared organic farming to going back 20 years in terms of farm practices, to the point of pulling weeds by hand. It takes more labor to grow organic, and those workers will all need somewhere to live.

In its application, PROfuutt Limited Partnership said it initially plan to build one housing complex with 36 units, each with three bedrooms. Ted Sanders, the company’s real estate development manager, declined to talk more about the project when contacted Wednesday.

McLane, the county planning director, said their first step is to get the land rezoned. Space age industrial, or SAI, is something of a throwback, she said, created by the Oregon Legislature in the 1960s around the time of the space race.

The housing site has been zoned SAI since the early 1980s in hopes of luring aerospace industries to Morrow County. Those companies never came, and since then McLane said they’ve been discussing what to do with the property.

“It kind of has marginal value as industrial land,” she said. “It really is a 1960s space race holdover here in Morrow County.”

The Planning Department has recommended approving a zoning change to Exclusive Farm Use. McLane said the location is preferable for farmworker housing, since they’ll be closer to the farm itself and avoid straining sewer and water services within Boardman city limits.

Another part of the application would also allow the Port of Morrow to extend a sewer line from nearby property it owns to serve the development. That condition would not take effect until after the housing itself is approved.