Deal saves North Las Vegas lumberyard from closure

Michelle Swafford

Friday, April 2, 2004 | 11:16 a.m.

A North Las Vegas lumberyard serving area homebuilders returned to local ownership Thursday after enduring nearly five years of financial challenges as part of a corporation that's now in bankruptcy.

Portland, Ore.-based Crown Pacific Partners LP sold Alliance Lumber at 4950 Berg St. back to Terry Ono and Dale Eggers for an undisclosed sum.

Bankruptcy court records show that if Ono had not submitted a proposal to purchase the 12-acre lumberyard, it would have been liquidated and 70 employees would have lost their jobs.

Under the terms of the deal, the lumberyard will now be called Desert Lumber LLC, which is what Ono called the company for about 15 years prior to selling it to Crown Pacific in 1999. Signs have already been changed to reflect the new name.

"We've always run it like we owned it, but now we do," Ono said. "Everything will operate as it has, but we'll be more enthusiastic with what we're doing."

Ono maintained operations of the lumberyard after selling it, but his contract was set to expire and court records say he and his partner, Eggers, were "essential to the operation of the business."

Although Crown Pacific is based in Oregon, it operates three lumberyards in Phoenix, which is where it filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last June to protect the company from creditor lawsuits while it re-organizes its finances.

In mid-2000, lumber prices dropped in the West, where the company does business. The weak lumber prices made it difficult for the company to remain viable during a bad economy, especially since it owed money on more than 500,000 acres of timberland in Oregon and Washington.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Phoenix approved the sale of the North Las Vegas location on March 24. Ono was the only person to submit a formal bid, which was equal to a cash sum of the book value minus current liabilities and $1.5 million, court records say. Ono also agreed to pay $400,000 for purchased assets and to assume some liabilities, court records say. The court papers didn't estimate the book value of the business and Ono declined to elaborate.

The court motion said the deal presented to Crown Pacific was "significantly more than the perceived liquidation value for the purchased assets."

Desert Lumber was not profitable in the second half of 2003 because of the bankruptcy, but no customers or business were lost, Ono said.

The company provides lumber annually for about 7,000 new homes.

Rick McPherson, president of Sunrise Carpentry Inc. in Las Vegas, has been a customer of Ono's for about 15 years and said the change in ownership is good for his industry and the valley as a whole.

"Terry and Dale put a lot into the local economy and a lot of the decision-making affects the whole valley," he said.

Mike Coronado, president of Westcor Construction in Las Vegas, said he has stayed with Ono's lumberyard through the good and the bad because of its superior customer service, but he is glad that Ono is in charge again.