A junkyard or antiques storage lot?

Associated Press

TACOMA – To relatives of the late Harold LeMay, the hundreds of vehicles parked on their property are valuable antiques destined for a museum.

But a Pierce County planner has declared the property a junkyard of “rusted out hulks” and ordered the vehicles removed.

Hearing examiner Keith McGoffin heard the family’s appeal of the order Thursday. He plans to visit the site himself before making a decision.

“You can’t look at the condition they are in now,” argued LeMay’s son, Doug LeMay, in defense of the cars. “You have to look at what they can be.”

People have to see the “goodness” in the cars, he said.

Harold LeMay was known for his collection of nearly 2,400 vintage automobiles, from old Chevrolets to English double-decker buses, kept in 58 buildings across five states.

Part of the collection is expected to go on display in the planned Harold E. LeMay Museum, a $75 million project backed by the family’s nonprofit corporation. The family hopes to open the museum in Tacoma within five years.

The seven-acre site at issue – east of Highway 7 near Rapjohn Lake in south Pierce County – is home to at least 100 cars in buildings and 250 parked outside. The vehicles range from a 1920s Ford Model A to a 1958 Buick and an AMC Pacer from the late 1970s.

Pierce County planner Anna-Marie Sibon, who declared the property a junkyard, argued that if the LeMays can keep hundreds of junked vehicles by declaring them antiques, that opens the door for others to do the same.

Pierce County has recently stepped up efforts to get rid of junked cars. A new hotline for reporting abandoned and junked cars and illegal dumping was inaugurated Friday.

Family members, including LeMay’s wife, two sons and a grandson, told McGoffin the collection is not a run-of-the-mill salvage yard. Restorers sometimes need three broken-down cars to get the parts to restore one car, Doug LeMay said.

Even cars made in the 1970s and 1980s can have historical significance, LeMay said.

For example, he said, a 1971 Ford Pinto with a broken windshield and faded paint has educational value: “It was Ford’s first attempt at competition with the imports.”

Dennis Reynolds, the LeMays’ attorney, said the county does not have a land-use classification that would apply to the collection. He suggested the hearing examiner find the property use is not subject to regulation and allow the family to continue storing vehicles there.

Reynolds also suggested the operation could be classified as a “community cultural use.”

Sibon said the county first contacted the LeMays about the cars in April 1999, in response to a neighbor’s complaint.

LeMay founded Pierce County Refuse Co. in 1943 and built it into LeMay Enterprises, a large private trash-removal company. He died in November 2000.