News - Local News

POSTED: Wednesday, Apr. 15, 2009

Port of Bellingham, city nearing deal on waterfront buildings

BELLINGHAM - The city and the Port of Bellingham appear to be nearing agreement on waterfront redevelopment issues that have divided them for many months.

At a joint meeting scheduled for noon Monday, April 20, in City Council chambers, port commissioners and the City Council will discuss what Port Executive Director Jim Darling calls "a proposed planning framework." The framework will be a major step toward completion of a master plan, development regulations, and an agreement on street and bridge connections for 220 mostly idle acres of waterfront property.

The framework also keeps alive the possibility of saving four older buildings on the site and remodeling them for new uses, but it likely means that other buildings on the site would have to go. That includes the 150-foot-tall digester building, by far the tallest on the site.

Most of the property slated for redevelopment is port-owned, but the city controls planning and zoning regulations and is also responsible for construction of new streets and bridges to open up the idle industrial area for construction of homes, shops, offices, and a new satellite campus for Western Washington University.

Darling said he and his staff, working with Mayor Dan Pike and Western Washington University, hammered out the proposed framework in a series of meetings over the past few weeks. He hopes that the port commission and City Council will approve that framework and direct port and city staffs to put together a formal agreement for further review in perhaps 30 days.

Although it wasn't listed as an agenda item for the Monday, April 13, City Council meeting, a discussion of the tentative agreement broke out anyhow after council member Barbara Ryan moved to postpone the April 20 meeting. She was seconded by Jack Weiss, but their motion failed on a 5-2 vote.

Ryan said she wanted to postpone action to give the Waterfront Advisory Group a chance to weigh in on the agreement. She also believes Pike is giving up too much in his effort to make a deal with the port and university.

Ryan favors a stronger effort to save the old red brick industrial buildings that were once part of Georgia-Pacific Corp.'s pulp and paper operations. As she sees it, the plan now taking shape appears to consign too many of those buildings to the wrecking ball, making it impossible to create the kind of historic district that Pike and the council once hoped for.

"The university and the port have driven this decision," Ryan said. "It's a decision that the council rejected. ... It eliminates the potential for a historic district."

Pike denied that. He contended that university officials have agreed to revisit their earlier opinion that they had no use for two old buildings - the board mill and the barking and chipping plant - in the waterfront area envisioned as a possible new home for Huxley College of the Environment.

"They've changed their tenor completely," Pike said. "Western is now committed to actively pursuing adaptive reuse."

Steve Swan, vice president for university relations, said Western remains receptive to reusing either the buildings themselves or their materials, but no decisions have been made.

"We will consider all possibilities, but they have to be financially feasible," Swan said.

The plan also calls for preservation of the G-P steam plant building and the Granary Building. Those buildings were identified as the best candidates for reuse in a recent report prepared by nine local architects.

Pike acknowledged that there is no guarantee that any of the old buildings can be saved, since the cost of doing so has yet to be determined.

Ryan also complained that the emerging plan for new waterfront streets appears to abandon Pike's earlier preference for extending existing downtown streets straight into the site, opting instead for an angled street layout.

Pike replied that while the compromise plan does call for angling some streets to make them run east and west, it also contains guarantees that view corridors to the bay from existing downtown streets will be preserved. The port also agreed to reduce block sizes on the site to make them conform to downtown, Pike added.

The architects' report also endorsed the east-west street configuration.

Pike said he did his best to accommodate citizens' opinions expressed in a series of public meetings last fall. The strongest message at those meetings was that citizens wanted port and city officials to resolve differences and get the project moving, he added.

The mayor also argued that the city and port risk missing out on opportunities for state and federal funding if they cannot agree soon on development plans.

"I think this is a pivotal moment, where we move forward or we move behind," Pike said.

City Council President Barry Buchanan said he thought Pike had come up with "a reasonably well-thought-out compromise."

Port Commission President Scott Walker agreed. He said it was time to get the project moving.

"There's plenty of other places that are going to want the investment when times get better," Walker said. "We shouldn't be arguing three or four years from now about street grids."

Walker also stressed that the port commission and council will not be asked to give final approval to anything on Monday. If they like the compromise's general features, they will direct staff to come up with draft development plans that will then run the usual gauntlet of public discussion, including hearings before the city Planning Commission.

Walker said those plans probably won't be ready for a final council and commission vote before fall.

City Council member Weiss, who voted with Ryan for delay at the Monday, April 13, meeting, said he wants to make sure there is enough time for the public to weigh in.

"I'm willing to compromise things and I'm willing to be very pragmatic about stuff," Weiss said. "I'm not trying to block anything. ... If there's an opportunity to have at least the semblance of a good public process, that would be better for the community."