The Auburn City Council on Monday unanimously declared the 8.25 acres of city-owned property at 302 Lund Road SW as surplus and gave Mayor Nancy Backus permission to negotiate and execute a purchase and sale agreement between the City and PAPÉ Properties, Inc.

PAPÉ Industries, which leases and maintains heavy-duty equipment and is the exclusive distributor for Kenworth’s 18-wheel trucks, in late August of this year submitted a letter of intent to the City of Auburn to buy the property, which Auburn acquired from King County in 2006 for $180,000.

It will be sold for no less than $200,000. so there will be no loss to the city, according to City Attorney Steven Gross.

But, said City Councilman John Holman, it is of keen interest to PAPÉ, which proposes to make it one piece of a three-part assemblage of land for a future business development. Indeed, it would serve as wetland mitigation site for the to-be-combined properties at 922 and 940 West Main St,, on which PAPÉ is considering settling a Kenworth Dealership.

“Hopefully, this will result in a little bit of money to our budget and some future business going in there,” Holman said.

The proposed dealership could be key to bringing into Auburn a significant new employer and a healthy number of jobs, Josh Arndt, senior economic development officer for the City, told the council last week at a study session.

“A business like this would bring an expected 35 to 40 new jobs to our community, spread out among management, sales, technical and operational positions,” Arndt said, noting the company estimates those positions would pay an hourly wage 40 percent higher than Auburn’s present average.

To provide for the overall enhancement of the area, in 2006 the City paid King County $180,000 for the parcel. In 2011, Auburn environmental staff compiled a wetlands analysis report that determined the property to be a Category 2 wetland but found at the same time it offered “a high potential for wetland enhancement to compensate for off-site wetland impacts.”

To put that more plainly, any entity that bought the land at 302 Lund Road could use it to make up for disturbances to wetlands for which its development activities are responsible elsewhere.

The Revised Code of Washington classifies the following types of wetlands as Category II wetlands: documented habitat recognized by federal and state agencies for sensitive plant, animal, or fish species; documented priority habitats and species recognized by state agencies; wetlands with significant functions, which may not be adequately replicated through creation or restoration; wetlands with significant habitat value; or documented wetlands of local significance.

As Holman noted, as a Category II wetland, the property is of no use to the city.

Of keen interest to city ears, Arndt noted that PAPÉ expects to make an initial economic investment in Auburn in the range of $4 to $5 million in land development and construction.

“The best part of all this is that this business not only creates jobs and brings higher wages with it, but produces sales tax revenue. When (PAPÉ) looked at six other properties it owns in the Pacific Northwest Region, each brings in an average of $1.5 to $3 million annually in taxes they pay,” Arndt said.

Of course, there are many hoops to jump through before any of that happens, including completion of estimates of the value of the property acceptable to both sides, and the company’s own feasibility studies, among other steps.