McMinnville, OR – Troubles continue for the Evergreen aviation empire as the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum and waterpark at the McMinnville campus potentially face a public auction next month for their landlord’s failure to pay a $1.9 million debt stemming from construction costs.
In December 2014 Hoffman Construction, the company that built the air and space museums as well as the waterpark, filed a foreclosure suit against the Michael King Smith foundation, a nonprofit that owns a number of Evergreen assets including the space museum and waterpark properties.
Hoffman’s $1.9 million claim stemmed from a 2013 promissory note of $8.5 million to be paid by the nonprofit. To secure that amount the Michael King Smith Foundation put up the space museum as collateral.
The foundation subsequently failed to pay the $8.5 million in full and in February 2014 signed a payment agreement with Hoffman that included an amended promissory note for $1.9 million. That amount was due in April 2014 and was secured by placing the waterpark as collateral.
The foundation also failed to meet the payment agreement by the April deadline and eight months later Hoffman filed for permission to foreclose on the secured properties.
In July the foreclosure was approved in Yamhill County Circuit Court and last month Yamhill County Sheriff Tim Svenson issued a writ of execution to sell the Evergreen Space Museum and Wings & Waves Waterpark property at a public auction in November.
The museum will continue operating as usual despite the pending auction, according to museum spokesperson Melissa Grace.
“We have been notified that our landlord, the Michael King Smith Education Foundation, has received a writ of execution on the sale of both the Space Museum and Wings & Waves Waterpark,” Grace said in an Oct. 13 statement. “Museum management is actively working on solutions to address this situation with the landlord.”
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Editor’s note: Emails from the Air Museum Network requesting comment from the Evergreen Aviation Museum went unanswered.