Byline: Sherri Buri McDonald The Register-Guard

Weyerhaeuser Co.'s Springfield containerboard mill, visible from Highway 126, looks the same as it always has: a solid, gray plant with stacks puffing away.

It gives no inkling of the sweeping changes under way since International

If approved by federal regulators, the deal would mark the end of Weyerhaeuser's nearly 60-year operation of a plant in Springfield.

"Weyerhaeuser started here in 1949," said Dan Egan, executive director of the Springfield Chamber of Commerce. "They were a big deal from the very, very beginning. For most of their time here, they were the largest (private) employer. More than that, because of their investments in equipment, they had the (single largest) effect on the tax base."

At some point in the mid- to late 1980s, Weyerhaeuser comprised 13.5 percent of the city's tax base, Egan said.

Nearly 2,000 people worked at Weyerhaeuser's Springfield complex about 30 years ago, said Springfield Mayor Sid Leiken. The containerboard plant alone, which now has 284 employees, had 550 workers as recently as early 1998.

A lot has changed in the pulp and paper industry over the past 50 years. It has become an intensely competitive, price-sensitive, global business, dominated by a few international players.

There had been rumblings that the Springfield containerboard plant's days were numbered, Leiken said.

"To me, the good news is they're not shutting down," he said. "They still feel this property is a good, solid operation."

By purchasing the mill, International Paper will increase its presence in Springfield, Leiken said. Eight years ago, International Paper bought Shorewood Packaging, which makes packages for DVDs and other consumers goods at its 120-employee operation in Springfield's Gateway area.

"What (the Weyerhaeuser sale) means from here on out, it's hard to say," he said.

In the decades since Weyerhaeuser opened its Springfield complex, it has housed all manner of wood products operations, including a sawmill, which closed in the early '90s, and a particleboard plant, which was sold to SierraPine Ltd. in 1999. The containerboard mill, however, has long been the heart of the 500-acre campus, pumping out rolls of brown kraft paper for the sides of shipping packages.

"We were predominately a timber town for many, many years," Leiken said.

After the sale to International Paper, Weyerhaeuser would still have offices and timberlands in Springfield, and roughly 1,125 employees in Lane County, company spokesman Greg Miller said.

Weyerhaeuser in Springfield

1949: Opens 500-acre Springfield complex.

May, 2000: Completes three-year, $50 million capital improvement project at the containerboard plant.

Sept. 2001: Weyerhaeuser lays off 110 workers at the containerboard plant.

March 17, 2008: International Paper announces plan to buy 114 plants from Weyerhaeuser's containerboard and recycling unit.