The parent company of the Prairie Wood Products sawmill in Prairie City intends to reopen the facility in early July and plans on hiring roughly 50 employees.

PRAIRIE CITY — The parent company of the Prairie Wood Products sawmill in Prairie City intends to reopen the facility in early July and plans on hiring roughly 50 employees.

The D.R. Johnson Lumber Co. announced in a Wednesday, June 1, press release that the sawmill will host a job fair at Chester’s Thriftway in John Day on Monday and Tuesday, June 13 and 14, from 10:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.

According to the press release, the company is looking to fill a variety of jobs, from maintenance and production to a job in human resources. Additionally, the sawmill is looking to fill five management positions.

Asked what the approximate pay range of the jobs would be, Prairie Wood Products President Jodi Westbrooks said in an email that the positions would offer a “family wage” with “competitive benefits.” Westbrooks added that more information would be released as the mill reopens in the summer. While she did not say how many employees have been hired so far, she did say all of the current employees are Grant County residents.

The Prairie Wood Products mill will focus on producing 8- to 9-foot Douglas fir studs. Westbrooks said the company plans to get its timber supply from a combination of public and private lands and would purchase its timber from independent loggers and landowners.

Malheur Lumber, Grant County’s only other sawmill, primarily processes pine, according to Craig Trulock, Malheur National Forest supervisor. Trulock said loggers under contract to harvest Douglas fir trees would no longer have to haul the logs to Elgin or Pilot Rock for milling. With the rising cost of fuel, he said, selling those logs to Prairie Wood would be a better option all around.

“We will fill that void,” Westbrooks said in her email. She said local loggers and landowners can contact the company to learn more.

Prairie Wood also hopes to collaborate with the Malheur National Forest and other public agencies on “important” forest restoration projects.

Currently, Trulock said, Prairie Wood does not have a contract with the Forest Service, but the mill’s mothballed cogeneration plant could provide a market for biomass coming off the forest.

The biomass, which is essentially small logs, branches and bushes that would otherwise get burned up in the forest or left on the ground, could be ground and burned in the cogeneration plant to generate heat and electricity, Trulock said.

Prairie Wood plans to restart the co-gen facility after it obtains the proper permits.

Jim Hamsher, Prairie City’s mayor, told the newspaper that after he posted the Prairie Wood Products press release on his personal Facebook page he received upwards of 10 phone calls for more information about the mill and how to get hired.

The Prairie City mill was purchased by the D.R. Johnson Lumber Co. in 1976. Two years later, the family-owned company added a stud mill and planer. Then, in the late 1980s, the company installed a co-generation power plant.

The sawmill, which operated successfully in Prairie City for more than 30 years and employed upwards of 100 people who worked two different shifts, shuttered in 2008 amid a housing market crash that led to a lack of available sawlogs.

D.R. Johnson restarted the mill in early 2009 but shut it down permanently by the end of the year. The cleanup of the mill, which sits at the west end of Prairie City, concluded in 2019.

Since then, much of the mill equipment has remained, along with the co-gen plant.

In Friday’s email, Westbrooks added that the company had been hoping to reopen the mill for years as the family had always wanted to return to Grant County.

“We are excited to be back and bring much-needed jobs back to the area,” she said, “reduce wildfire risk and promote forest health.”