New owner takes over Pacific Lumber, changes its name

A company owned by the founders of Gap Inc. took control of the bankrupt Pacific Lumber Co. on Wednesday, marking a new chapter in the history of one of the country’s oldest and most controversial timber firms.

Pacific Lumber’s logging practices over the last two decades under Maxxam Inc. of Houston have drawn widespread opposition from environmentalists.

The deal was completed after Mendocino Redwood Co. paid more than $550 million to creditors to gain control of 210,000 acres of timberlands in Humboldt County, Calif., and a sawmill owned by Pacific Lumber, which filed for bankruptcy protection in January 2007 amid mounting debt and logging restrictions.

Under the new owner, the Scotia, Calif., timber firm’s name was changed to Humboldt Redwood Co.

Mendocino Redwood is principally owned by Donald and Doris Fisher, who founded the San Francisco clothing chain Gap in 1969.