An approximately 80 acre parcel of land currently held by the Bureau of Land Management will be handed over to the State of Oregon. The property is located near the intersection of Burgess and Huntington road (Screenshot from Deschutes DIAL)

Earlier this week, after being introduced to a plan by Oregon State Lands to acquire approximately 80 acres of federal land in La Pine, Oregon governor Tina Kotek summed up her approval with five words: “Let’s go build some housing.”

And with that, Kotek — speaking at an Oregon State Land Board meeting — effectively greenlighted a project decades in the making.

The La Pine parcel will be handed over to the State of Oregon by the Bureau of Land Management as part of a settlement from a 1992 lawsuit.

The lawsuit determined that the United States owed Oregon 1,477 acres of school land that were not handed over when Oregon became a state in 1859. At the time, the land owed to Oregon was either occupied or otherwise unavailable.

It took decades to come to a resolution because of compounding problems.

“Much of the land surveys were not completed until the late 1800s or so. So we may not have known what lands were owed to us that were already spoken for,” said Alyssa Rash, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of State Lands.

“There was a disagreement over the accounting of these lands,” she added.

The 80 acres, located within La Pine’s urban growth boundary, are “in lieu” of those lands that were never handed over to Oregon in the mid-1800s. Even with the agreement, the United States still owes Oregon around 1,477 acres — land to be handed over at a later date.

At its board meeting last week, the Department of State Lands said it will work with La Pine to build homes on the property to address workforce housing needs in Central Oregon. The property in question consists of undeveloped forested land zoned high-density residential.

The property, near the intersection of Burgess Road and Huntington Road, is surrounded by housing on the west, north and south.

The transfer is expected between July and September, according to Chris Castelli, deputy director of land management at the Department of State Lands.

“The zoning and location make it an excellent opportunity to build housing in Central Oregon. Once acquired the department will plan the quickest, most cost effective way to build housing on the site,” Castelli told Kotek and other attendees of the Department of State Land board.

As the name implies, the Oregon Department of State Lands manages lands under state ownership. Among other things, it is also responsible for the Common School Fund, off-shore lands and coastal estuarine tidelands, and estates with no heirs.

Castelli says options include selling the land to a development partner or partnering with the city of La Pine to create a development plan or market the site for sale.

A National Environmental Policy Act analysis of the property, conducted by the Bureau of Land Management, did not find any sites or relics of cultural significance.

Geoff Wullschlager, city manager for La Pine, says he has few details about what the state plans to do with the land it is acquiring from the BLM. He hasn’t been contacted directly by the state over plans for the property

While plans aren’t clear, Wullschlager said he welcomes the idea of building workforce housing.

However, Wullschlager is concerned about regulations under consideration by the Oregon Legislature that would exempt the state from taxes for five years after housing construction. Rules that could allow the state to build what it wants without considering local land use laws are also worrying.

“That’s very scary to a small city like us,” he said.

“The city is not against workforce housing or access to affordable housing. It’s the principle of our home rule authority and our concern about our infrastructure and our services support of something that is essentially just going to be passed along to us. That’s the main issue here.”