Embattled property investor Terry Emmert broadcasts mixed signals in Grays Harbor

Editor’s note: Oregon-based businessman and property investor Terry Emmert owns 57 properties in Grays Harbor County. Throughout Hoquiam and Aberdeen, Rent or Lease EMMERT INTERNATIONAL signs adorn buildings of all types. However, Emmert’s vision for revitalizing the U.S. Highway 101 corridor has largely remained a mystery. This is the first in a two-part series. The conclusion will run in Saturday’s The Daily World.

In the 2006 Disney/Pixar animated feature film Cars, the fictional southwestern town of Radiator Springs along iconic Route 66 has been bypassed by Interstate 40.

By the time we meet our hero, the brash up-and-coming race car star Lightning McQueen, who gets lost after rolling out of the back of his long-haul tractor-trailer, Radiator Springs has fallen into disrepair. Businesses are dilapidated and the residents are moribund.

By the end of the film, McQueen learns humility and thanks in part to his rich and famous racing buddies, helps return Radiator Springs to its former glory as a vibrant, colorful, thriving community along a famous highway.

Enter Jerry C. Reeves

Jerry Reeves blew into Grays Harbor County in 2019 and saw tremendous opportunity for revitalizing parts of Hoquiam and Aberdeen. Since another famous and iconic highway, U.S. Highway 101, runs right through downtown Hoquiam and Aberdeen, Reeves felt that people just needed a reason to stop.

Reeves, president of the J.C. Reeves Corporation and self-described practitioner of feng shui design principles, is a property developer who invited his then-business partner Terry Emmert of Emmert International in Clackamas, Oregon, to invest and eventually purchase 57 properties in Grays Harbor County.

Their purchases include the Hotel Morck, the Becker Building, the D&R Theatre, and many other parcels. Many of the properties they purchased were dilapidated and had been vacant for a number of years.

According to Reeves, a 72-year-old Pacific Northwest-native and inventor of something called the “Chi-Builder,” he has been friends with Terry Emmert for 40 years and has been working with the mercurial businessman on a variety of projects and initiatives since 2018.

Reeves’ experience is mainly residential and according to the J.C. Reeves Corporation’s official website, since the company’s inception, he “has developed 20 communities and built over 2,100 homes in the Portland Metropolitan area.”

His bio on the Chi-Builder website states, “Since 1982 Jerry has developed 17 Neighborhood Communities, including Sherwood View Estates, Monet’s Garden, Hedges Park, Foothills View, Kaitlin Park, Brush College, Tanner Crest, Shalico Woods, Cheyenne Meadows, Hedges Creek, Megan Park, Echo Valley Meadows, Montreux Place, Green Tree Heights and Ash Meadows. He has built over 3,000 homes in the Portland Metropolitan area.”

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls, Oregon, in 1972, Reeves worked as a structural engineer with KPFF in Portland.

He earned a certification in classical feng shui from the Oregon Institute of Technology in 2009, and according to Reeves, he became a feng shui “master” in 2010 after completing a nine-month program at the Golden Gate School of Feng Shui in Oakland, California.

A perusal of the J.C. Reeves Corporation website reveals no mention of commercial development or any other employees. His LinkedIn profile indicates that Reeves has been the CEO of J.C. Reeves Consulting Services since 2000, however, an internet search for an associated website led back to the J.C. Reeves Corporation.

Another company attached to Reeves’ name, VIP Properties LLC, also leads back to the J.C. Reeves Corporation. According to his Linkedin profile, Reeves has been a licensed real estate broker in Oregon since 1999, a licensed residential contractor in Oregon since 1982, and a certified professional structural engineer in Oregon and Washington since 1980.

In 2006, Reeves entered into an agreement to purchase two parcels of property from Charles and Mary Lou Babitzke in Woodland, Washington, for a total of $1 million. According to an appellate court ruling in Feb. 2021, “after Reeves defaulted, the Babitzkes’ assigned their rights under the promissory note and deed of trust to Gravity Segregation, LLC. Gravity filed a foreclosure action against Reeves. After a bench trial, the court entered a judgment and decree of foreclosure against Reeves.”

Reeves, who also had agreed to pay off the Babitzke’s mortgage with PNC Bank for $194,000, made two payments of $100,000 each and a handful of mortgage payments before defaulting. PNC Bank foreclosed on the parcel with the mortgage in 2015.

According to court documents, “Gravity filed a Deed of Trust Foreclosure Complaint against Reeves on April 11, 2016. Gravity claimed that under the promissory notes and deeds of trust, Reeves agreed to pay the principal sum of $900,000 in annual $100,000 installments until fully paid but had defaulted.” At trial, the parties stipulated that $200,000 of debt was uncollectable due to the statute of limitations.

Reeves lost the bench trial in 2018 and the appeal in 2021. The appellate court upheld the $596,256 judgment against Reeves. The total judgment was $671,046, including attorney’s fees and a 12% post-judgment interest rate per year.

The trial court had concluded, “One reasonable inference that can be drawn from the totality of the evidence in this case is that Mr. Reeves engaged in a concerted scheme to build a friendship with the Babitzkes, earn their affinity and trust, and then play upon that friendship by repeatedly breaking promises to pay them, stringing them along so that the statute of limitations on the Babitzkes’ ability to enforce the note would expire. The Court draws this inference and finds the behavior of Mr. Reeves in this case unconscionable.“

Not too long after he lost the bench trial, Jerry Reeves descended upon Grays Harbor County.

Enter Terry Emmert

Eighty-year-old Terry Emmert has been described as many things — tycoon, mogul, litigious, and a few you can’t repeat in polite company.

According to the company’s website, “Emmert International was founded by Terry Emmert, in Clackamas, Oregon, in 1968. As the company grew and expanded, we began designing and manufacturing our own heavy-haul and rigging equipment to meet the unique needs of our customers’ projects. Such configurations have helped us to consistently complete any job we are assigned, including the relocation of Howard Hughes’ infamous ‘Spruce Goose,’ the (Hubble) Telescope, the FermiLab g-2 Cryostat, the LACMA 340-ton Levitated Mass, the Odd Fellows Building in Salt Lake City, and the 3.2 million-pound Fairmont Hotel.”

Emmert International employs more than 150 people and has won numerous industry awards.

Celebrity Net Worth estimates Emmert’s net worth at $200 million and describes him as a “developer who founded Emmert International,” which has an estimated annual revenue of $29.5 million.

When you look beyond Emmert International and the success of the company and its many claims to fame, a different picture emerges.

Terry Emmert has owned two professional sports teams — the Portland Thunder of the Arena Football League and the Portland Chinooks of the International Basketball League — both defunct, and his name is linked to abandoned and/or failed development and property management projects, many with Jerry Reeves’ involvement, including the Forest Glen Living Facility in Canyonville, Oregon, Cascade Bagel and Deli in Lakewood, Washington, and the Cully Neighborhood in Portland, Oregon.

Both men’s companies are listed as “Developers — Land” by the Home Builders Association of Greater Portland.

“I’ve always been into real estate, I’ve built some subdivisions, I built a shopping center, built some apartments, but small scale,” Emmert said. “I prefer remodeling, remodeling is more fun to me.”

Meanwhile, according to the Grays Harbor County Assessor’s website, Emmert’s Silver City LLCs currently own more than 50 properties in the county including everything from empty lots to single-family homes, storefronts along main drags, an auto body shop and even a church.

Emmert also bought a residential property in Westport. Many of these properties were purchased or brokered by Jerry Reeves or under his advice.

“In 2019, I was called by some investors to come over and look at the (Hotel) Morck and evaluate it for investment and purchase. At that time I was already a partner with Terry Emmert. I was introduced to David Quigg, (we) struck up a friendship and I started looking at the possibilities to actually help Aberdeen and bring it back to its glory,” Reeves told the Aberdeen City Council during public comment at their Jan. 29 regular meeting. “I took that vision to Terry. We started buying properties. The issue has been, for some reason, Terry would not put any money into them after we acquired them. The approach was to find what we wanted to acquire, fix up the buildings, and then rent the buildings. For some reason he couldn’t understand that we had to spend some money on them to bring them back to what I call ‘vanilla’ — heating, air conditioning and stuff like that.”

As for the assertion that Emmert refused to put money into the properties after they were acquired, Emmert says, “That is not truthful.”

Emmert, who says he has only known Reeves since 2018, said the idea behind his investment in Aberdeen in particular is to bring the city back to its former glory.

“The plan would be to renovate and to occupy and try to bring back the stature to Aberdeen that it once had. It was the lumber capital of the world, a beautiful city and it got hit when the lumber industry went down and the fishing industry went down because of a lot of environmental garbage. It’s got some beautiful old buildings. It’s a town that’s got people who were born here, that were raised here who think a great deal of it,” Emmert said. “I was born in Portland, Oregon, I wish Portland would have the attitude that some of the people here in Aberdeen have that would like to bring their town back to a very profitable place that people would like to come visit, shop.”

Hoquiam-based real estate agent David Quigg says that Reeves is quite the “character” and said Reeves and Emmert came to Grays Harbor with lofty aspirations.

“I was at work and I got a call from Andy Bickar, who owns Rediviva, (a chic restaurant and bar on East Wishkah Street in Aberdeen) and he said, ‘Hey, David, there’s a guy here, a character, wanting to look at the Morck.’ I went down to Rediviva, and that’s where Jerry Reeves was. He had come one day, and he ended up I think three days wearing the same clothes, staying in a hotel,” Quigg said. “We ended up giving him a tour of the Becker building. Jerry has an engineering background, he’s really direct, we would just go look at a building, and he’d be like ‘yup, nope, yup, nope, yup, nope.’ We went to look at the Morck. Soon after meeting Jerry, Terry came down to look at some of the things. Terry was so excited because they really wanted to take a community and they had these ideas about building kind of a music-centric tourist destination, and using local rock and roll artists and working with the school, and having bars and live music venues. They were really pumped about being in Grays Harbor and they had a lot of really good ideas.”

Quigg said that Reeves was the point person for a “skeleton crew” while Emmert ran his other enterprises. He also said challenges renting the newly acquired buildings arose quickly.

“They had experience buying commercial buildings in Oregon and then finding tenants to move into the spaces,” Quigg said. “The biggest stumbling block has been in Grays Harbor is we don’t have a) tenants to fill the spaces and b) tenants to fill the spaces that have the means to do the tenant improvements it takes to open a nice business.”

Typically, a commercial property owner will rent a space as a blank canvas allowing the renter to build it out as they see fit in accordance with the conventions of their business and assume those costs. The property owner or landlord would be responsible for structural issues or making sure the basics were up to snuff prior to a renter assuming occupancy.

But the word around town from multiple sources is that proposed monthly rents were sky high and unaffordable, at least for the small business owners of Hoquiam and Aberdeen. Many of these proprietors found themselves without store space when the Shoppes at Riverside in South Aberdeen shuttered its doors in February 2021.

Many of those business owners were enjoying sweetheart rent deals at the mall and found themselves hit with sticker shock when they were forced to find storefronts downtown and elsewhere.

“That’s where I think there was a major disconnect. It happened on top of the mall closing down and at the time the tenants at the mall were paying below market value for commercial space,” Quigg said. “It was definitely above market, but the rent people were used to paying at the mall was not realistic.”

Emmert said he was led to believe that tenants were lined up and ready to move into the properties he had purchased.

“Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of business here. Some of the real estate people that we dealt with said they had people interested in leasing and renting,” Emmert said. “Unfortunately, the prices people were paying for rent, for example, at the (Shoppes at Riverside), little did I know they had such a low price that was less than the price you rent a falling down warehouse for, so they were accustomed to very low rents. No matter what price you pay you gotta have enough money to make your taxes and pay your overhead, and pay your utilities.”

According to Quigg, many of the buildings that Emmert purchased once housed businesses that were ruined because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We have so many amazing family-run businesses that have been multigenerational, and unfortunately coming up and then hitting into COVID, these businesses were decimated,” Quigg said. “So now you’ve got people that their business has closed, the business is passed down to the kids. The kids own derelict or run down old buildings. They’ve gone for sale and they’ve been for sale for years. Then Terry came along and quite a few of the buildings we helped him purchase were buildings that people were continuing to bleed them without a business in them, they’re trying to pay insurance, they’re trying to keep the buildings going, but they had gone downhill. Quite a few of the buildings they bought … the past owners that just could not sell the buildings.”

Quigg added that there was palpable excitement when Reeves and Emmert came to town.

“Part of the reason I was okay working with them is that the impression I had at the time is they were excited about what Grays Harbor could become,” Quigg said. “When you’re used to being in an urban area like Portland, with the price of real estate, this seemed like a candy store. The prices were right, a lot of the buildings have great old character and the people want something good and new to happen in the community, so it really started out on such a positive note. It would’ve been disappointing to me if I was a business owner and couldn’t find tenants to work with.”

Falling out

In what can only be described as a fractured partnership, a rift, a chasm between Jerry Reeves and Terry Emmert has led to confusion, delays, anger and restlessness.

The city of Hoquiam has grown impatient and is in the process of buying properties back from Emmert for nearly $1.5 million. In March of 2024, the Hoquiam Revitalization Task Force recommended to the city council that the city should “pursue private and public partnerships to promote the purchase, ownership and operation” of nine key properties in the “City of Hoquiam Revitalization Plan, City of Hoquiam Historic District, Waterfront Development Plans and Northshore West Segment Levee Project.” The properties the city of Hoquiam has purchased from Emmert are located at 518 Simpson Avenue, 403 7th Street, 201 5th Street, 523 Levee Street and 203 5th Street. The sale closed on March 26.

Reeves believes he and Emmert can repair the rift and get back to the business of executing his vision for revitalizing Hoquiam and Aberdeen, but admits that Emmert won’t talk to him and that he doesn’t know what Emmert’s plans are for the remaining properties after the Hoquiam sale is finalized. He had every intention of apologizing to the city of Aberdeen for bringing Terry Emmert to town.

“I kinda plan on apologizing to them for bringing Terry Emmert to this city,” Reeves said before the Jan. 29 City Council meeting. “It was actually a vision of mine to bring Aberdeen back to its glory and bring Grays Harbor and pull it all together in a holistic way, obviously to make money, but also to improve the whole area. It was my passion to do that. I know how to create, I’ve got a creative sense about me. I like the feeling that everybody has to drive through the center of town. All we had to do was pin down strategically the right properties and invest in them and come back around and turn the lights on.”

When he addressed the Aberdeen City Council during both public comment periods at the aforementioned Jan. 29 meeting, an apology was not forthcoming. In fact, he spent much of the second period reciting his resume.

“Terry was never really a builder, he was a heavy hauler, so when I called him up here I believed he would let me run everything and call the shots and do everything because I am a builder. He’s such a micromanager and control freak in a way he wouldn’t let anything happen, he wouldn’t spend any money to allow the buildings to be fixed up,” Reeves told the City Council. “The only tenants that we could find were tenants who had money to spend on the buildings themselves to do tenant improvements. He just wouldn’t approve the budgets, he wouldn’t do anything. Now I don’t know what he’s doing, he hasn’t explained it to me, he won’t meet with me. He basically cut me off, locked me out of his building and has not been willing to talk with me ever since. I still would love to work with the city, I’d love to be part of something. I just gotta work out this little issue with Terry.”

And this “little issue,” as Reeves put it, just might be pending litigation. According to court documents, Reeves is suing Emmert for breach of contract in circuit court in Clackamas County, Oregon. The trial, originally set for November of last year, is scheduled to begin in June.

Emmert’s one word description of the lawsuit? “Unbelievable.”

“Right now, we’re having a tug-o-war about this whole thing, Terry and I, where I’ve had to sue him for the accounting,” Reeves said. “He’s taken all the rents, he’s sold some properties, we need to reconcile our monies. He wouldn’t do that, so I had no choice but to sue him, and then he’s mad at me for suing him when he wouldn’t square up with me on the money.”

According to Reeves, Emmert owes him “millions.”

Reeves cited homelessness and ineffective law enforcement as main issues in Emmert’s attempts to rent or lease many of the properties in question, while Emmert blames vandalism and the lack of information, or misinformation.

“To be honest with you, let’s just say there really wasn’t a full disclosure of the hassles we were going to have to deal with,” Emmert said. ”It’s hard to get people to come and rent a building when they can’t even walk into it safely to show it. As soon as you go ahead and paint a building, then we start getting graffiti, then you have to go back and repair it. One of the buildings we had ready to go, they went in and stripped all the wiring out. We fixed up another building and they go in and damage that. We fix a window and they break it again. We board up a window, unfortunately we get cited because you can’t have boards on the window, but then again, when you have safety glass you have to custom order and have it custom made, so it takes a period of time. We learned it the hard way.”

Emmert cited visible public drug use as another barrier to showing rental properties to prospective tenants.

“Every time I came up to show a building, I had a restaurant wanting to move into the Becker, I’d bring ‘em up lo and behold, I got a guy shooting up drugs, I’ve got people passed out,” Emmert said.

According to Reeves, Emmert did not want to spend the money to bring the properties back up to a basic standard.

“We believed, and were told originally, that the homeless situation was going to be corrected for the downtown. We knew we wanted to start with the downtown. I had some visions for all of that to make it work as a hub,” Reeves said. “The homeless thing did not end up being solved by the government. It was a problem, and rightly so I think Terry had some reluctance by then and then he also got bashed by the locals when we put our signs out everywhere. Terry’s idea was don’t spend anything, make the customers spend everything. He didn’t want to bring the spaces back to ‘vanilla.’ I was constantly fighting with him in that regard. I wanted to use local sub(contractors) and suppliers. Terry’s view was use them to get the bids, then he’d bring his guys from Portland in.”

Since the falling out with Reeves, Emmert has a new team led by convicted felon Donald Holmes of Westport and appears to be going his own way with Aberdeen city officials and moving forward with ideas and plans for the properties Emmert owns without Jerry Reeves.

In 2015, Holmes pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to defraud the government and commit wire fraud, and in 2017 was sentenced to six and a half years in federal prison for defrauding taxpayers and fuel producers out of $65 million in a scheme involving renewable energy credits and for filing false claims with the IRS. In addition, Holmes was ordered to pay $9.5 million in restitution to the United States taxpayers and an additional $6.2 million in restitution to the victims.

“Everybody makes mistakes in their lives, when you have a good person and they have a good heart, without heart and without people forgiving others for things they have done in the past, it would be a pretty sorry world,” Emmert said. “God helps those who help themselves, but God also wants you to reach out and help your fellow man.”

Opportunity Zones

When you ask certain people in Grays Harbor about Terry Emmert, the words “opportunity zones,” “capital gains” and “tax breaks” practically fall out of their mouths.

Almost every article you can find on Opportunity Zones from 2019 mentions “tax break” or “tax incentive,” yet Reeves said Opportunity Zone capital gains tax savings had nothing to do with Emmert’s investment in properties in Grays Harbor County.

According to Quigg, Opportunity Zones were a topic of discussion, but the program was not at the core of Emmert’s plans.

“I think they had spoken of Opportunity Zone because it was just one of the potential tax benefits of purchasing in economically depressed areas,” Quigg said. “My impression and my experience with them early on, the opportunity was to develop a community into something that could be spectacular and awesome.”

Emmert also denies participating in Opportunity Zone investments.

“Absolutely not, there would be some things we naturally did as a 1031, there is no Opportunity Zone money we’ve received, not one dime,” Emmert said.

He added that he has not paid into the Qualified Opportunity Zone Funds.

Grays Harbor County District 3 Commissioner Vickie Raines believes investment in Opportunity Zones to realize capital gains tax savings has been the goal all along.

“(Emmert) owns a tremendous amount of property. It’s pretty extensive, totalling $16 million in assessed value,” Raines said. “It was my understanding he bought those properties to take advantage of the Opportunity Zones, there were tax breaks you get with the Opportunity Zones. That’s a person’s prerogative. I think hoarding these properties and doing nothing to them while they get in further disrepair isn’t a service or benefit to anyone other than the owner that’s getting the tax break.”

Federal “Opportunity Zones” are designated areas for development that allow investors to catch a break on capital gains taxes. Grays Harbor has three Opportunity Zone census tracts, which include parts of Aberdeen, Hoquiam, and the coast from Ocean Shores to Moclips, according to Greater Grays Harbor, Inc. In April 2019, Greater Grays Harbor, Inc. held an event at the Quinault Beach Resort and Casino to educate interested parties on Opportunity Zone investments. More than 70 people attended the event.

The Internal Revenue Service’s website states: “If you hold your investment in the Qualified Opportunity Fund for at least 10 years, you may be able to permanently exclude gain resulting from a qualifying investment when it is sold or exchanged. The exclusion occurs if you elect to increase the basis of your Qualified Opportunity Fund investment to its fair market value on the date of the sale or exchange.”

Participants are required to use IRS forms 8996 and 8997 if they are participating in Opportunity Zone Qualified Opportunity Funds. The filling of these forms is not public record. An IRS official cited stringent privacy laws.

“From what I know, I will say that Terry’s gain is not that. Terry’s gain is 1031 exchanges, meaning he takes money out of one project and throws it into the next and keeps them rolling so he doesn’t have to pay tax,” Reeves said. “You can do that anywhere, it’s like for like. It’s a really good, simple game, that’s more Terry’s game. This other one (Opportunity Zones), not so much. I haven’t seen the accounting to know what Terry’s doing. I do not believe, and we’ve never had any conversations to say that was a strategy. Did we know that it was there, absolutely, but that was not my primary reason for bringing Terry here.”

According to Investopedia, “A 1031 exchange is a swap of one real estate investment property for another that allows capital gains taxes to be deferred. The term — which gets its name from Section 1031 of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) — is often used by real estate agents, title companies, investors, and more. Some people even insist on making it into a verb, as in, ‘Let’s 1031 that building for another.’”

An IRS fact sheet on 1031 exchanges states, “Whenever you sell business or investment property and you have a gain, you generally have to pay tax on the gain at the time of sale. IRC Section 1031 provides an exception and allows you to postpone paying tax on the gain if you reinvest the proceeds in similar property as part of a qualifying like-kind exchange. Gain deferred in a like-kind exchange under IRC Section 1031 is tax-deferred, but it is not tax-free.”

Purchasing 57 properties of various and disparate types in the Grays Harbor area does not smack of 1031 exchanges, however an IRS Fact Sheet on Like-Kind Exchanges Under IRC Section 1031 indicates some flexibility. Although the exchanges don’t have to be immediate, there are time constraints and some of the properties in question were purchased nearly six years ago and are quite unique.

That IRS fact sheet says, “To accomplish a Section 1031 exchange, there must be an exchange of properties. The simplest type of Section 1031 exchange is a simultaneous swap of one property for another. … Both properties must be similar enough to qualify as ‘like-kind.’ Like-kind property is property of the same nature, character or class. Quality or grade does not matter. Most real estate will be like-kind to other real estate.”

And like filing IRS forms for Opportunity Zones, “You must report an exchange to the IRS on Form 8824, Like-Kind Exchanges and file it with your tax return for the year in which the exchange occurred.”

FEMA’s 50% rule

Perhaps the biggest elephant in the room when it comes to much of where Hoquiam and Aberdeen sit on a floodplain is FEMA’s “Substantially Improved/Substantially Damaged Buildings” policies.

In a 2018 booklet titled Answers to Questions About Substantially Improved/ Substantially Damaged Buildings (SI/SD), FEMA lays out what is commonly referred to as FEMA’s “50% rule,” which ties back to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and its standards.

According to the booklet, “Substantial improvement means any reconstruction, rehabilitation, addition, or other improvement of a structure, the cost of which equals or exceeds 50% of the market value of the structure before the start of construction of the improvement. The term includes structures that have incurred ‘substantial damage,’ regardless of the cause of damage and regardless of the cost of repair work actually performed. However, the term does not include: any project for improvement of a structure to correct existing violations of state or local health, sanitary, or safety code specifications that have been identified by the local code enforcement official, and that are the minimum necessary to ensure safe living conditions, or any alteration of a ‘historic structure,’ provided that the alteration will not preclude the structure’s continued designation as a ‘historic structure.’”

The booklet also says that local officials are the arbiters when it comes to determining a building’s status.

“The NFIP requires participating communities to review all applications for development in mapped SFHAs (Special Flood Hazard Area) and to enforce their floodplain management regulations and building codes. The local official who is designated to administer those regulations and codes is responsible for making SI/SD determinations. … When a local official makes a determination that a building or manufactured home in an SFHA will be substantially improved, the structure must be brought into compliance with floodplain management (and building code) requirements for new construction based on flood zone. Every aspect of the structure must be made compliant.”

According to global consulting firm JS Held, “If improvements or repairs have triggered the requirements for substantial improvement or substantial damage, the structure must be brought into compliance with the floodplain management requirements for new construction based on the specific flood zone in which the building is located, with the NFIP requirements as the minimum standard and building code flood design requirements for new construction.”

Those requirements cover elevating, meeting freeboard requirements, lower level enclosures, basements or below grade areas, utility and building service equipment, use of flood damage resistant materials and making buildings reasonably safe from flooding.

According to the FEMA booklet, “When a local official makes a determination that a building or manufactured home in an SFHA will be substantially improved, the structure must be brought into compliance with floodplain management (and building code) requirements for new construction based on flood zone. Every aspect of the structure must be made compliant.”

Several of the properties Emmert owns in Grays Harbor County have market values north of $500,000.

In short, building renovations can get very expensive very quickly.

Editor’s note: The final installment will be published in Saturday’s edition of The Daily World and will include the effects of the loss of North Shore levee funding on real estate development in the area, Emmert’s efforts to re-open the D&R Theatre, Aberdeen’s vacant building program, and the fallout from the closing of the Shoppes at Riverside and the impact on the commercial rental market.

The Hotel Morck is located at the corner of Heron Street and K Street in Aberdeen. Terry Emmert purchased the property, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, for $200,000 in April 2021.