Oregon transportation officials plan to ask lawmakers in November for authorization to spend up to $1 million to purchase land in southeast Salem and begin initial planning to build a new central facility to consolidate operations in the area.

SALEM — Oregon transportation officials plan to ask lawmakers in November for authorization to spend up to $1 million to purchase land in southeast Salem and begin initial planning to build a new central facility to consolidate operations in the area.

Staff at the Oregon Department of Transportation already lined up a unique deal to buy approximately 66 acres in southeast Salem from the Oregon Department of Corrections. In addition to an unspecified amount of cash for the land, ODOT would throw in reflective material used to make signs which the agency obtained through a settlement with a contractor.

“It’s apparently material that is used in signage, and the Department of Corrections has a signage shop,” said Tom Fuller, ODOT’s communications manager. ODOT uses a different type of reflective material for its signs, Fuller said. The reflective material came from a contractor that overcharged ODOT for services.

ODOT will present its request for $1 million to the interim House-Senate Ways and Means committee when lawmakers hold interim committee meetings Nov. 16-18. The Oregon Transportation Commission approved the plan to request the money at its Oct. 16 meeting. Fuller said he did not know when ODOT might request money to build the new facility.

“We would have to evaluate whether it is cost effective to move forward once the studies are done,” Fuller said, referring to planning studies.

According to a recent ODOT report prepared for the Oregon Transportation Commission, buildings at the agency’s existing compound in southeast Salem — which includes a maintenance facility, equipment repair shop and stockpile sites — are “functionally obsolete, in poor condition and are located in the floodplain.”

The location in a floodplain means the buildings cannot be rebuilt and the ODOT report also cited concerns about the proximity of industrial functions close to Shelton Ditch, a salmon-bearing man-made canal.