News - Local News

POSTED: Monday, Nov. 23, 2009

Waterfront transportation plan worries Bellingham City Council

BELLINGHAM - Some City Council members remain to be convinced that the city and Port of Bellingham are doing enough to encourage alternatives to cars as waterfront transportation plans move forward.

After a Monday, Nov. 23, presentation to the council by Les Reardanz, assistant city attorney and waterfront project manager, council member Jack Weiss contended that the city's approach to waterfront transportation issues doesn't appear to be visionary enough.

Estimates are that 80 percent of travel in the city now relies on single-occupancy vehicles, and the city's comprehensive plan goal is to reduce that to 75 percent by 2022. Reardanz told the council that planners are considering a goal of 70 percent for travel to and from a redeveloped Bellingham waterfront.

That didn't impress Weiss, who is chairman of the council's waterfront committee. He said the developing plans rely too much on "conventional car trips, based on the conventional way of doing business."

Mayor Dan Pike defended the planning effort, saying that the seemingly modest car-trip reduction goal won't be easy to reach. He argued for setting an attainable goal, adding that reaching the goal won't be the end of the process.

"Five percent is a difficult thing to achieve," Pike said. "If we achieve it, great. We can keep ratcheting down."

Council member Barbara Ryan said transportation policy on the waterfront should go beyond providing bike and pedestrian trails and bus access. She wants to make sure that the city does not encourage car trips by allowing development of too many parking spaces.

Pike said he didn't see much danger of that. Creating lots of parking spaces on the 220-acre waterfront would require multi-story garages, and Pike said it is unlikely that developers could charge enough in parking fees to cover the costs of building them.

Weiss wasn't reassured.

"I don't think we're on the right track right now," he said.

Reardanz told the council that these and other planning issues will come into sharper focus in the months ahead as the environmental impact statement is put into final form and the master plan is developed and released for public scrutiny. The draft master plan is not expected to be ready for public debate until mid-2010.

But another lingering waterfront issue - the fate of the red brick buildings that once housed Georgia-Pacific Corp.'s pulp and paper operations - may come to a head before the end of 2009.

An architectural firm was hired earlier this year to study the buildings to determine if they could be salvaged for new uses. The firm is now scheduled to report to the city's Historic Preservation Commission on Dec. 1, and to the City Council on Dec. 14.