Dirt Hugger Sprucing up TD's Snipes Street with Retail Site
Dirt Hugger purchased the Jones Auto Wrecking & Towing site in April to make way for a retail space for their compost and other products made locally with green waste.
Dirt Hugger’s Tyler Miller was actively moving Debris from the former site of Jones Auto Wrecking near Columbia Cinemas in The Dalles
DirtHugger is embracing The Dalles with a solid bear hug as they clean up the former site of Jones Auto Wrecking & Towing at 749 Snipes Street just south of Kentucky Fried Chicken in The Dalles.
Chief Organics Officer Tyler Miller was on the site on Tuesday with an excavator clearing brush and preparing the site for a retail yard.
The new location, when complete in late summer or early fall, will make it easy for locals to access the company’s compost and more than a dozen other products.
They will add up to four jobs to the local economy, and the company will improve sidewalks and the streetscape on the property frontage. And the intent is to pump up the company’s revenue stream as they keep some 55,000 tons of green waste out of local landfills.
Dirt Hugger is utilizing just one acre of the 6.5 acre site purchased. They bought the property in April for $531,888, according to Wasco County Tax records.
And the site will be a tad nicer than going to the manufacturing site in Dallesport where customers contend with heavy wind at times.
Historic find - Miller points to this early car crusher they located while removing debris from the site of the new Dirt Hugger retail location at 749 Snipes Street, The Dalles
“We’re really stoked about this site,” Miller said on Tuesday, noting they were looking forward to landscaping the front entrance of the property.
Dirt Hugger is currently going through a planning review with the City of The Dalles. They are seeking approval for a new landscape retail yard business to operate and sell compost, compost blended products, bark, rock for bulk sales, and bagged/bucketed products.
Miller said they would have in the area of 20 retail bays - rectangular areas walled by 2-ton concrete blocks where compost and bark are contained until loaded into customer’s pickups or trailers with a tractor bucket.
A little Background on Dirthugger
The company has created jobs by utilizing unsold fruit, food scraps, beer yeast, yard and woody debris to create a sellable, nutrient-rich compost. At the same time, the company is removing green waste from landfills, reducing methane.
At 17 acres, their facility in Dallesport is twice its original size when they started at 111 E. Rockland Road six years ago.
Good for the Environment
They are actually keeping 55,000 tons of annual green waste from being dumped at local landfills. If not diverted, that much tonnage could produce massive amounts of methane, a significant contributor to greenhouse gasses. Methane is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide, according to the EPA. In other words, that is the equivalent of eliminating 2,544 passenger vehicles or conserving $1.5 million gallons of gasoline.
