SALEM — A developer who planned to build an eco-resort in the Metolius River Basin said on Monday that he might now build the resort instead in Clatsop County.

Shane Lundgren has been looking for alternate resort locations since 2009, when state lawmakers banned destination resorts in the Metolius River Basin. Lawmakers then created a limited window for developers such as Lundgren, who had already invested in potential resort properties, to instead develop small resorts elsewhere in the state.

Lundgren said he was just beginning to think about potential locations for a resort, after working for months to secure a development extension from the Oregon Legislature.

“We haven’t even really gotten out a map,” said Lundgren, who is the manager of Dutch Pacific Resources, the holding company for the Metolius River Basin resort property.

Lundgren’s development opportunity will likely survive thanks to a bill lawmakers passed in the waning hours of the legislative session on Friday. The state would give property owners who planned to build resorts in the Metolius River Basin three more years to build elsewhere in the state, under the bill headed to Gov. Kate Brown’s desk for a signature.

The bill specifically lists Clatsop County as a potential site. It would give developers more time to take advantage of a deal the Legislature passed in 2009, after it designated an area of critical state concern on the Metolius River and banned destination resorts in the area.

Jefferson County had previously allowed resorts in the area.

Under the 2009 bill, resort property owners in the Metolius River Basin had until June 29 of this year to apply to use development credits that would allow them to build “small-scale recreation” communities elsewhere in the state.

There were two qualifying destination resort properties: the Metolian with more than 600 units combined of tourist lodging and single-family homes, and a 2,500-unit development proposed by the Ponderosa Land and Cattle Co.

The bill to extend the deadline by three years would allow the small resorts to be built in Clatsop, Morrow, Sherman, Umatilla and Wheeler counties, or any county with a June 29, 2009 unemployment rate more than 110 percent of the state average.

The Willamette Week newspaper first reported last week that hearings and amendments to House Bill 3431 suggested Lundgren might be interested in developing a resort in Clatsop County.

The “small-scale recreation” communities allowed under the 2009 legislation would have smaller footprints than the destination resorts built elsewhere in Oregon. They would be limited to 320 acres, 240 units to be used primarily for tourist lodging, recreation facilities and one restaurant up to 5,000 square feet. Golf courses are not allowed, and state law imposes other conditions such as recycling irrigation water.

So far, no one has contacted Clatsop County land use planners about locating a small resort in the area, division director Heather Hansen wrote in an email Monday. The only entity to request information was the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development, which asked for GIS data in order to map areas eligible for that type of development in late March or early April. The agency produced the map at the request of state lawmakers, who added Clatsop County as an area eligible for small resorts by amending the bill in June.

Lundgren said he asked lawmakers to add Clatsop County to the list of areas where he could build a resort, because of its proximity to Portland.

“You can’t really build something that’s too remote and expect people to show up,” Lundgren said. Any development proposal would likely include a mix of single-family homes and tourist lodging. “The one piece that resonates is you have to have a mixture,” Lundgren said.

“Based on our experience here, we really want to be very respectful or sensitive to the local area,” Lundgren said. Specifically, he acknowledged that many Oregonians are “cautious about over-development.”

Lundgren, whose family also owns House on Metolius resort near Camp Sherman, said he has been on a quest to return capital to the investors in the planned eco-resort known as the Metolian. It would have included more than 600 housing units built to minimize energy and water usage.

“They invested quite a bit of capital,” Lundgren said.

Lundgren was optimistic Monday that the idea of a “very small, very low-key” eco-resort will gain support, and said the plan is “not a subdivision development.”

According to a legislative document, the three-year extension was necessary because the “recession and housing crisis of the late 2000s” slowed development in the state.

“We couldn’t get anything financed” during the recession and real estate crash, Lundgren said. Investors also shied away after the Legislature banned destination resorts in the Metolius River Basin and Lundgren said they told him, “‘Show us they’re not going to pull the football from under you again.’”

House Bill 3431 could help send that message. “I think the Legislature’s trying to help us,” Lundgren said.