History

“Meet man who had role in King City’s Success”
(Published with permission from The Regal Courier)

This new city/subdivision would have been for all ages except for Lionel Domreis’ intervention.

Lionel Domreis was in the right place at the right time decades ago, influencing King City developer Ron Sorenson to build a retirement community instead of a conventional subdivision.

It came about after Domreis, long involved in real estate and land development, purchased a small tract of land at 135th and Walnut Street in Tigard.

His next step was a meeting of the Tigard Water Board, where he met future King City developer Ron Sorenson of Tualatin Development Co.

“(We wanted) to ascertain when we would get water to the properties we owned,” Domreis said. “We were informed there was no way either of us would get water for two years. I didn’t want anything to do with a piece of land that had no water rights so I got my money back.”

According to Domreis, Sorenson did not originally plan to build a retirement community.

“But I had lived near Sun City (outside of Phoenix) and south of Tigard at Woodburn, and some people both my dad and I had known for years were successfully selling a senior community, Woodburn Senior Estates,” Domreis said. “So I urged Ron Sorenson to seriously consider building a retirement community in Tigard instead of the homes he planned to sell to the public at large.”

Sorenson checked on the viability of the project and paid for the design of a retirement community, according to Domreis.

“He had to acquire much more land,” said Domreis, who later arranged the sale of the third house ever sold in King City to Joe Grimstad, owner of the famous pony farm on Hall Boulevard.

“(Putting the King City development together) was a complicated and very involved step Ron was taking, and (it) involved much more outside financing than he had originally planned”, said Domreis, who lived for a time in King City. “That (was) very understandable. I furnished Ron with his first sales manager, who was very successful for Ron…”

The April 1979 Regal Courier reported, “In 1964 Sorenson formed Tualatin Development Co. and started the King City Adult Community, which was considered innovative as he was the first person to introduce a planned unit concept in this area.”