Cintas Corp., the Ohio-based uniform and cleaning giant, in June 2024, spent $1.4 million buying a big chunk of land in west Eugene to build a regional industrial laundering and chemical cleansing center.
The company got the city and Lane County to approve a three-year property tax waiver on the anticipated 60,000 to 80,000-square-foot facility. The center would add 45 jobs to the company’s existing Eugene payroll, Cintas said.
Then, nothing.
To date, the only thing that’s sprouted on Cintas’ 10-acre site along West 11th Avenue is grass.
The company hasn’t put in for building permits.
Cintas did not respond to recent inquiries from Eugene Weekly.
Does Cintas still want to build the estimated $28 million center?
“While we don’t have details, we were recently told by a Cintas representative that the project is still moving forward,” says Lindsay Selser, a spokesperson for Eugene’s planning department.
Publicly traded Cintas, with 48,000 employees and 500 facilities nationwide, competes with other cleaning and supply companies to provide uniforms, mats and mops, and services such as cleaning restrooms.
The new center would be for “industrial laundering, sanitizing, and chemical processing of [Cintas] garments to cleanse, disinfect and alter the garment condition,” the company said in its tax-exemption application.
Cintas has a 14,000-square-foot Eugene center near the Eugene Airport that provides uniforms and cleaning supplies and services. It’s unclear if Cintas does laundering or the chemical treatment of clothing there.
That property, which Cintas leases, is one of five Cintas facilities in Oregon. Three are in the Portland area and one is in the Medford area. The Eugene center’s territory covers Salem to Bend/Redmond, Cottage Grove and the Oregon Coast, says Cintas’ website.
Cintas, in its 2024 tax-waiver application, said the new facility would add 45 jobs to its existing Eugene workforce of 71.
Cintas would begin construction in July 2024 and open the place by June of this year, the application said. The structure would cost $14 million. It would have another $14 million in heavy equipment, pollution control apparatus and the like, the application said. Chemical cleansing of soiled uniforms often requires use of toxic solvents.
The three-year property-tax waiver would save the company about $380,000 a year in taxes.
The land is in the Greenhill Technology Park. Cintas bought the parcel from Datalogic, a barcode scanner company based in Italy that has an office in the Greenhill park. With a mind to expanding, Datalogic bought the 10 acres from the park’s founding Cone family in 2016 for $1 million. But the company later shelved the expansion plans.
Wildfang house back in court
In unrelated news: The most-gawked-at unfinished house in Lane County is back in the foreclosure process.
We’re talking about the massive residence, wrapped in teal vapor barrier fabric, in a field on the east side of Interstate 5 near Coburg.
Utah-based Zions Bancorp in late December filed a foreclosure lawsuit against the owners, Kyle and Christina Wildfang, saying they had failed to make payments on their $2.5 million mortgage from July 2023 to July 2025. The pair owe a total of $3.1 million in principal, interest, late fees and other costs, Zions Bancorp alleges.
The Wildfangs, who own two restaurants in Eugene-Springfield, have not yet filed an answer in court. They’ve told Eugene Weekly they wish the media would stop writing about the place.
The Wildfangs also have not paid property taxes on the 20,000-square-foot house since 2023, and owe a total of $76,000 in taxes, Lane County tax records show.
The palatial house, clearly visible from I-5, has long been a focus of wonder.
The Wildfangs began planning it about seven years ago and took out the mortgage from Zions. But they ran out of money. Zions sued to foreclose for nonpayment and, in 2024, won its lawsuit. But last summer, Zions abruptly withdrew the suit.
The new lawsuit differs a bit from that initial one: It cites a larger number of payments that the Wildfangs failed to make, and a greater total debt.
Bricks $ Mortar is a column anchored by Christian Wihtol, who worked as an editor and writer at The Register-Guard in Eugene 1990-2018, much of the time focused on real estate, economic development and business. Reach him at Christian@EugeneWeekly.com.