City and county commissioners are going into Boy Scout mode when it comes to the defunct and polluted Farmland Industries site: They want to be prepared for whatever happens.

Both commissions next week are set to sign a confidentiality agreement that would allow them to inspect the property and examine Farmland documents that give more information about the old industrial site, which is just east of Lawrence on Kansas Highway 10.

“What we’re doing is our homework,” said County Commissioner Charles Jones, who is leading the city and county efforts. “We want to make sure that we understand what is happening out there.”

The agreement – set to be signed by the county Monday and by the city Tuesday – comes just days after two private companies expressed interest in buying the 467-acre site.

But Jones said the agreement is not a sign the city and county are preparing to make a bid to buy the property. Instead, Jones said he thought it was more likely the city and county would be approached to participate in a public-private partnership to redevelop the property into an industrial park.

“This interest by the private sector gets the ball rolling, but I’m still pretty confident that when the ball stops rolling there will be a significant role for the city and the county to play,” Jones said.

Jones said he was confident the Kansas Department of Health and Environment would do a good job making sure environmental issues at the site are dealt with properly.

But he said city and county leaders would need to understand other issues at the site before they become part of a public-private partnership.

For example, he said, knowing how much steel, concrete and piping needs to be removed from the site before it can be redeveloped will be an important cost consideration.

Jones and others have said they think it’s likely that local government will need to be a financial partner to turn the property into an industrial park, which has been the preference of local leaders. Public funding likely would be needed because a private company would hesitate to pay all the costs of building streets and sewers only to wait 10 years or more before the industrial park is filled with users.

“Any company that could afford to do that probably would choose not to because they could invest the same amount of money in other ways and get a better return on their investment,” County Commissioner Bob Johnson said.

TRC Companies Inc., a Connecticut-based company, confirmed Tuesday it plans to make an offer for the property controlled by a trust that oversees the assets of bankrupt Farmland.

St. Louis-based Environmental Liability Transfer Inc. said Wednesday it also was interested in purchasing and cleaning the property so that it can be redeveloped for residential, retail and industrial uses.

No timeline has been set for when the bankruptcy court may schedule a public auction to sell the property.