DUNDEE, Ore. — The Chehalem Park & Recreation District will end its short-term lease on Crabtree Park, returning responsibility for the property to Yamhill County on Jan. 1, 2026. The CPRD board was briefed on the transition during its Aug. 28 regular meeting.
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Crabtree Park, located on NE Fairview Drive in Dundee, features public restrooms, reservable picnic shelters, and the Green Thumb Nature Trail. It sits next to the privately operated Chehalem Valley Sportsman’s Club, which is not affiliated with CPRD.
Jim McMaster, president and chairman of the CPRD board and former CPRD supervisor, said the district has maintained the park at no cost to the county during the lease.
“I began working for the district in 1980, and we were maintaining the park then,” McMaster said. “I retired in 2018, but CPRD is still maintaining the park to this day.”
Maintenance costs vary from year to year, he said. The district has previously installed a playground and handled infrastructure repairs such as road work.
“It is not just the operations costs … there are liabilities associated with it, whether it’s roads or creek banks, bank stabilization or replacing playgrounds and pavilions,” said Clay Downing, CPRD superintendent. “There are just a lot of things that have aged, so we’re looking at a second-generation park.”
Downing said short-term leases create uncertainty for all parties and do not reduce costs.
“The CPRD looks really hard at giving up any parkland, but again, since it was not owned by us, it was something that we said … we’re stretched pretty thin,” McMaster said. “Do we want to give it up? No, not really. But we also didn’t want to pay to own it, and that wasn’t in the cards.”
District staff said they are working with county officials to ensure a smooth transition. CPRD has also contacted neighboring property owners, including the sportsman’s club and Knudsen Vineyards.
“I’m not sure the county is ready to give up its ownership of the park without a financial transaction between the district and them,” McMaster said. “We’ve got some other new parks that are getting built, and we have a limited staff. So at this point we’re going to let the county take back the property that they own.”
The Crabtree family donated the land to Yamhill County in 1967, the same year CPRD was established, with the condition that it remain open to the public.
“It can’t be used just privately, it has to be open to the public or it reverts back to the Crabtree family, whomever they may be at this time,” McMaster said. “We said that we would maintain it and keep it going until the first of the year, and at that time, the county will take it over.”
The Yamhill County Parks and Recreation Advisory Board is expected to meet in late September to discuss the park’s future.
