Sunday, April 7, 2013

Greatest Good?

For the past few days I've been criticized by some folks for some of my positions.  I spend hours every day researching and finding information to make sure I know as much as I can about a decision I'll have to make but in the end I find a certain guiding principle very helpful:


"...where conflicting interests must be reconciled the question will always be
decided from the standpoint of the greatest good of the greatest number in the long run."     James Wilson, Agriculture Sec'y.  Letter to the first forester, Gifford Pinchot, dated 1 Feb 1905



Here's a link to the full letter.  It's actually a great read and quick.

http://www.foresthistory.org/ASPNET/Policy/Agency_Organization/Wilson_letter.pdf
 
 

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

McAuley Votes "No" on Airport Hotel?

A response to a question posed on the Bellingham Herald.   

http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2013/04/02/2948706/port-of-bellingham-moves-ahead.html

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Because there were two sites, the other just up the street from the winning location, and both sites had the same appraised value giving the public (the port) the same potential rate of return at buildout, I weighed the project pros and cons differently than the commission overall.

Airport growth is a mixed blessing, but needless to say, it is becoming a problem for residents.  More, expensive traffic mitigations are being planned.  There is increased noise, of course. And we seem to have a hard time capturing the airport visitor here locally for more than a few hours which means they come here for the airport but don't really spend much money.  So I believe we at the Port need to start looking more carefully at balancing demands on the airport which didn't really need to be done when it was a sleepier little place.

We know the typical Bellingham International Airport (BLI) customer is value conscious, which was confirmed again by the people from IHG, the owners of Holiday Inn brands, who told us why a Holiday Inn flagged hotel makes the most sense at BLI.   That means airport visitors come to Whatcom County but they aren't really being captured by our local economy. 

A hotel at the airport won't do much to enhance visitor capture for the broader business base, either, because they will find long term parking, a room and a restaurant just a short walk from the terminal (the nearness to the terminal is a plus), which is itself just a mile from the nearest fueling stations adjacent to an I-5 on/off ramp.

Granted, and to be fair, any conferences held here should spill over into the broader economy but conferences are booked online not by a random drive by and the local amenities are the attraction for the conferees not freeway visibility. 

So, in light of the fact that there were two sites available, the outcome for the lease would be the same and the outcome for the service - rooms, conference space and a restaurant at the airport - would be the same I looked at the project in a broader context.   

The freeway site is forested, sloping, wet and offers a buffer along an already overcrowded freeway frontage.  The other is flat, mostly unforested, dry and sits on a corner at Bakerview and Airport Way, the only street into the terminal complex.  

The only advantage to the freeway site is the visibility of the structure to passing traffic, essentially an advertising opportunity and I don't fault the proponents for desiring that opportunity, I would probably do the same thing.  Yet a traveler now is not driving by and picking the first hotel they see when they get sleepy, but if they did, in this case that sleepy traveler will come across the Hampton Inn at the exit first, anyway. No,this hotel is aimed at the air traveler and small conferences where people will want better air travel access.  

So in that broader context of the project I didn't think it appropriate to assume the sites have equal value.  The freeway site has a difficult to price "locational" value based on it's visibility but there was no premium placed on the property by the appraiser for that visibility and, therefore, no improved value to the property owners, the citizens of Whatcom County.  

Also, the parking area for the hotel is designed to abut hard up against the highway right of way offering no opportunity to replace even a small portion of the lost landscape buffer.  Which means the experience you will have driving by this site on  I-5 will be same old, "me too" urban drive-by offering nothing at all new, local or interesting to the visitors the airport is attracting. 

Don't get me wrong, the structure will look nice for sure, but if the airport is bringing in 600,000 fliers and probably over a million total visitors we should be looking at offering a somewhat different, more unique experience for that visitor that they won't see by just driving another 35 minutes south, or in Everett, or Seattle, or Chehalis (where I grew up) or Vancouver, WA.  I believe that by offering a more unique experience we can capture that visitor for more than a night at a hotel 300 feet from the terminal they are flying out of and back to before they jump in a car and head straight to the freeway. 

It's difficult to be unique in a global marketplace, for sure, so to me part of the uniqueness in this case is the simple fact that our airport freeway frontage is *not* all urban buildout that looks like every other urban buildout on the I-5 corridor. It's not much, I know, but it's here already and it's free.   

Long story short, the airport can now support a nice hotel so, sure let's put one in and get that small, yet measurable economic development boost. But having two, equally valuable sites available, both with nearly equal access to the airport terminal, a provable demand factor for the product driven by the airport not our region and, in the end, an equal rate of return for both the property owners and the proponent I couldn't just ignore the downsides of the development. 

With an equal upside for both sites, excepting the visibility, the freeway frontage site has a greater impact and, therefore, I couldn't support the project at that location.