PENDLETON — Six months after fire gutted Grain Craft’s flour mill in Pendleton, the fate of the site remains unknown locally, and possibly at corporate headquarters in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

“We have no new information to share at this time,” Natalie Faulkner, Grain Craft communications director, said.

Umatilla County has no record of any property transaction involving Grain Craft since 2016. That was the sale of a warehouse for $390,000, converted to the office of Blue Mountain Electric, 515 S.W. Fourth St.

“Last spring, before the fire in August, surveyors from Portland surveyed all of Grain Craft’s properties in Pendleton,” Heather Blagg, co-owner of Blue Mountain Electric, said. “I know that because they were surveying us and I asked them what they were doing. I told them that Grain Craft no longer owned this building.”

Former Pendleton Flour Mills personnel are not in the loop, but can make educated speculations about Grain Craft and its insurance company’s decision-making.

Tony Flagg of Pendleton, longtime CEO of Pendleton Flour Mills, said the decline in already low demand for pastry flour is one reason the mill is unlikely to be rebuilt. The region’s soft white winter wheat is milled for pastry flour.

Another problem is its location.

“A flour mill needs to be in an area of consumption or a zone of production of cheap grain, including the cost of transportation,” Flagg said. “Pendleton is neither.”

The surviving grain elevator and warehouse might find buyers as gathering-in terminals intermediate between on-farm or nearby storage and river barge or sea-going sites, Flagg said. But even in this role, they suffer from geographical, economic and even safety constraints.

“Farmers don’t like their teenaged truck drivers delivering grain downtown,” he said. “It’s farther from their fields and less safe, as opposed to Mission.”

Flagg pioneered grain pile storage with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation board. This now common method dispenses with concrete or metal elevators or bins to hold grain until sale.

Neighbors of the former flour mill, 501 S.E. Emigrant Ave., similarly report only rumors, not solid information from the companies involved.

“The latest rumor is that they’re not going to rebuild,” said Arnold Wardwell of AEW Welding and Custom Fabrication. His business is at 514 S.E. Emigrant Ave.

“Rumors before that were rebuilding could take two to three years,” he said. “The grain elevators can’t be emptied for lack of power. Truckers are suffering. They have to go the river or to the Duff and Helix (wheat) piles.”

Wardwell’s video of the burning flour mill across Emigrant Avenue from his shop was popular on the East Oregonian’s website last year. His neighborhood was smoky and noisy during demolition.

The city has repeatedly tried to find out what plans Grain Craft might have.

“Crickets,” Pendleton City Manager Robb Corbett said. “We have made several attempts to contact the owners. We believe they will not rebuild.”

The city’s planning department indicated lack of interested buyers so far.

“Anyone looking to buy the property would have to contact us to see what they can do with it under our codes,” Pendleton City Planner George Cress said. “Nobody has done that yet.”

Redwood Capital Investments of Hanover, Maryland, bought Grain Craft last June, shortly before the fire. The holding company was established in 2006 as the investment vehicle of billionaire Jim Davis, co-founder of Allegis Group, the largest staffing firm in the U.S.

Grain Craft operates 12 flour mills around the country, but Pendleton Flour Mills was one of its founding components. Demolition of the mill continues.

An earlier version of this story contained passages that editorialized. The East Oregonian deleted that portion of the story.