Commission takes a bad vote on Western Crossing

I've long supported a strong partnership with WWU.  I have been pushing for a clean-tech campus on Bellingham's waterfront with Western as an anchor in partnership with the private sector. That is why I was disappointed with Western Crossing's board pushing forward on gaining control of waterfront property at this time.   I'd like to explain my vote and value any feedback you had.

I voted against Western on the waterfront, in the currently proposed location, for three reasons:

1. As of yet, Western does not have a concrete plan nor funding. They have had a decade to come up with a plan and it is concerning to me that they do not have one - in fact, all Western Crossing has is rough visions (see link below). The Port should have done an RFP for the property to let the private market help determine the best and highest use for this parcel.  That is the process being used on property adjacent to this one and is consistent with the master plan.

2. There is a clear conflict of interest. One of the port commissioners serves on the Western Crossing board and the Western Foundation Board. That commissioner should have recused himself before this vote.

3. It's important to be consistent in all of our dealings. Without having a plan, or an RFP process, or fitting in with the Master Plan, we set a dangerous precedent for giving exceptions down the road.

If Western was and is the best and highest use for that parcel, they would win in an RFP process. I call on my fellow commissioners to revisit their vote and do an RFP so that the best proposal for our community and the long term can be determined.

This vote tells the community that the port commission has double standards, that we can ignore procedures and plans, that we can tell one group of local investors they *must* go through an RFP process and another group with no plan or funding that they do not.   This is exactly the sort of reason Whatcom County voters lost faith in the port.

http://media.bellinghamherald.com/smedia/2013/06/19/12/08/TKQTT.So.39.pdf#storylink=relast

Time to reopen Laurel St to the Boardmill?

I recently took a very detailed look at the old Boardmill building on Bellingham's waterfront.  After my own inspection, I now believe that we have at least three buildings that can readily be put to use with modest investments: the Egg Co-op/Granary, the Boardmill and the Lignin building.



The Lignin building (gray roof, pale walled in the upper right of the image above) is partially used now, has great access to Cornwall Avenue with 53 thousand square feet of prime, dry, free span warehouse.  It needs the sprinkler system tested and electricity re-installed    There is debate about the railline moving back to the bluff but until that happens, which I have no reason to believe it will happen in the next few years if ever, that building sits ready for service.

The Egg Co-op/Granary will need a few millions to properly meet visual and code standards, but at least 2 local groups stand ready to make that happen.

The Boardmill is particularly exciting, however.  In the image above, the Boardmill is the long, low building just below the very tall, skinny Digester in the center.  Now, it looks a little rough to the untrained eye but is in need of only simple cosmetic upgrades and repairs. Those upgrades will by no means be cheap, potentially running above $1 million.  Those upgrades will, however, be unbelievably lower in cost than constructing a new building.

The Boardmill sits adjacent to the Laurel St. right of way.  The building is not out of place in any future development scenario if we choose to keep it.  The structure is solid, dry and the best part is the incredible second floor that is wide open to ceilings approximately 30 feet over head.  The building is so stout that the original gantry cranes on the second floor can still be used from one end of the building to the other.

Also, the structure originally had huge windows in the upper floor walls that are filled in with wood framing and plywood.  These windows, approximately 18 feet by 18 feet, once replaced, will flood the upper floor with so much daylight there would be almost no need for artificial lighting.  The structure could also produce a nice return on an energy investment with a solar array on the roof  from local Itek Solar (itekenergy.com), including awnings utilizing panels from Marysville based Silicon Energy (silicon-energy.com).

The value in the Boardmill building stems from its location, its high adaptive reuse potential and the simple fact that it is a neat structure with a unique form that we can use to attract high tech research and development type companies. There is a working railway crossing and ample parking adjacent to the building.

The Egg Co-op can be the initial anchor on the north with the Boardmill anchoring the south while the spaces between can be carefully filled in.  The key is in ensuring that we get a through street constructed right away to connect Roeder to Cornwall - this would be Granary to Bloedel to Laurel. While the Granary/Bloedel/Laurel corridor provides basic public access as a throughway  it also opens the area for development and access to the industrial land around the shipping terminal - there is no reason to wait.

We need anchor buildings in service, we already have them and we need them right now, not in three years when the rest of the region has eaten our lunch in the economic upswing.

As for Laurel St to the Boardmill?  It can happen in weeks if we choose to make it happen.

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
  

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

...........................................................................

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.     

Making the Case for Building Reuse

The link here is to a pdf that's 94 pages long,  the paragraphs below are just the executive summary badly formatted to read here but you'll figure it out  :-)  

The Greenest Building

Quantifying the Environmental Value of Building Reuse

Executive Summary

Until now, little has been known about the climate change reductions that might be offered by reusing and retrofitting existing buildings rather than demolishing and replacing them with new construction. This groundbreaking study concludes that building reuse almost always offers environmental savings over demolition and new construction. Moreover, it can take between 10 and 80 years for a new, energy-efficient building to overcome, through more efficient operations, the negative climate change impacts that were created during the construction process. However, care must be taken in the selection of construction materials in order to minimize environmental impacts; the benefits of reuse can be reduced or negated based on the type and quantity of materials selected for a reuse project. This research provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the potential environmental impact reductions associated with building reuse. Each year, approximately 1 billion square feet of buildings are demolished and replaced with new construction. 

This research provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the potential environmental impact reductions associated with building reuse. Utilizing a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodology, the study compares the relative environmental impacts of building reuse and renovation versus new construction over the course of a 75-year life span. LCA is an internationally recognized approach to evaluating the potential environmental and human health impacts associated with products and services throughout their respective life cycles.This study examines indicators within four environmental impact categories, including climate change, human health, ecosystem quality, and resource depletion. It tests six different building typologies, including a single-family home, multifamily building, commercial office, urban village mixed-use building, elementary school, and warehouse conversion. The study evaluates these building types across four U.S. cities, each representing a different climate  zone, i.e., Portland, Phoenix, Chicago, and Atlanta. A summary of life cycle environmental impacts of building reuse, expressed as a percentage of new construction impacts, is shown in the following figure (Summary of Results).

Key Findings and Analysis

Building reuse almost always yields fewer environmental impacts than new construction when comparing buildings of similar size and function. The range of environmental savings from building reuse varies widely, based on building type, location, and assumed level of energy efficiency. Savings from reuse are between 4 and 46 percent over new construction when comparing buildings with the same energy performance level. The warehouse-to-multifamily conversion – one of the six typologies selected for study – is an exception: it generates a 1 to 6 percent greater environmental impact relative to new construction in the ecosystem quality and human health impact categories, respectively. This is due to a combination of factors, including the amount and type of materials used in this project.

Conclusions

For those concerned with climate change and other environmental impacts, reusing an existing building and upgrading it to maximum efficiency is almost always the best option regardless of building type and climate. Most climate scientists agree that action in the immediate time frame is crucial to stave off  the worst impacts of climate change. Reusing existing buildings can offer an important means of avoiding unnecessary carbon outlays and help communities achieve their carbon reduction goals in the near term. 

This report sets the stage for further research that could augment and refine the findings presented here. Study results are functions of the specific buildings chosen for each scenario and the particular type and quantity of materials used in construction and rehabilitation. Great care was taken to select scenarios that would be representative of typical building reuse or conversion projects. However, environmental impacts will differ for building conversions that use different types and amounts of materials. Others are encouraged to repeat this research using additional building case studies; replicating this analysis will enhance our collective understanding of the range of impact differences that can be expected between new construction and building reuse projects.

This study introduces important questions about how different assumptions related to energy efficiency affect key findings. In particular, further research is needed to clarify how impacts are altered if a new or existing building can be brought to a net-zero level using various technologies, including renewable energy.

Big Black Horizon Ship on Bellingham's Waterfront

Earlier this week Joe Teehan on KBAI's Joe Show asked about the Horizon Lines vessel, Horizon Fairbanks, down on Bellingham's waterfront to which I gave a a very short answer so here's the long version.

In order to protect US shipbuilders and US workers the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 stipulated that shipping goods from  US port to US port would require a US flagged vessel, built by US citizens in the United states, owned by US citizens and crewed by US citizens.

Wikipedia has a pretty good entry on the Act here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920


The Horizon Fairbanks is maintanied by Fairhaven Shipyard personnel, she is 669 feet long and built in Mississippi in 1973.  

Her former names are the Sea-Land Marketer, Sea-Land Expedition and then Horizon Fairbanks.  

Horizon Lines pays just under $1000 per day to moor the Fairbanks in Bellingham.

The good news is she brings consistent business to Bellingham, the bad news is she's not working. So if she goes back to work I'm sure we'll miss the income but that means the economy on our coast is  much stronger.



Here's a couple interesting articles:


http://www.westernfrontonline.net/news/article_841ec3e2-8286-5f04-b062-531ba33f91c7.html

 http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/photo.php?lid=852262

Port Scoping Comment on GPT

The following is a letter I will submit to the Commission on Tuesday, 22 January 2013.  Two weeks ago I asked that the Commission submit scoping comments on GPT, specifically related to economic impacts, but my argument was poorly formed and I had no documents prepared for review so the request fell flat.  Because this is the final opportunity to weigh in as a formal body I will once again ask for Commission support.  Should the commission refuse its full support by not signing the letter below, I have prepared essentially the same letter but coming from me personally and reworded to not use the port as a formal requester.  

I have a great deal of respect for the port's mission and feel that it has, at times, strayed into territory best left to other agencies, so if the letter isn't quite what some folks would desire please note that the port's mission, though seemingly broad, is actually narrowly defined by state law and the letter below attempts to stay within the bounds of what ports do.

Thanks for reading and feel free to comment!

Mike M
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21 January 2013 

From:   Port of Bellingham Commission
             1801 Roeder Ave.
             Bellingham, WA 98225 

To:       GPT/Custer Spur EIS

c/o CH2MHill and Co-lead Agencies
1100 112^th Ave. NE, Suite 400

Bellevue, WA 98004

Re: Gateway Pacific Terminal Scoping Comments

Dear Sir or Madam, 

As the only government body with elected representation tasked by the people of Whatcom County to focus strictly on the fulfillment of certain, “essential transportation and economic development needs of this region while providing leadership in maintaining greater Whatcom County’s overall economic vitality” and, given that the Gateway Pacific Terminal project meets county and state thresholds of significant impact, it is, therefore, incumbent upon the Port of Bellingham, on behalf of the citizens of Whatcom County whose interests the port serves, to request that the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Gateway Pacific Terminal (GPT) project, as proposed, include a robust assessment of transportation and economic impacts, both positive and negative, created by the project.   

It should be noted that in 2010 the Port of Bellingham submitted a letter to the Washington State Department of Natural Resources in support of a potential terminal at Cherry Point.  While not specific in drawing distinctions regarding the commodities supported by a terminal, the Port of Bellingham has a long standing position generally in favor of a deep-water terminal at that location. 

Because an EIS is designed less as a tool to find what is ‘right’ about a project and more intent on finding those actions that will create significant environmental burdens or consequences, it is important for the port to be interested in issues pertaining to the purview of the port and within the bounds of law; specifically, the economic and transportation impacts of the project. 

Per Washington Administrative Code (WAC) 197-11-444, the EIS is required to consider the following:

2(c) Transportation

(i) Transportation systems

(ii) Vehicular traffic

(iii) Waterborne, rail, and air traffic

(iv) Parking

(v) Movement/circulation of people or goods

(vi) Traffic hazards  

The Washington State Department of Ecology and Whatcom County have determined GPT to be a project of significant impact, it is, therefore, wise to consider not only the immediate environmental impacts at the site but also the wider impacts upon the infrastructure required to support the terminal.  Most notably, that infrastructure will be a private rail line operated by Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF) and the many public roadways the rail line intersects. 

 

While the burden and risk associated with the commodities carried on the rail are to be borne by private entities, the rail line itself does cross a significant number of public roadways and will create impacts at or near those crossings.  An example of an analogous situation is the addition of a multi-acre shopping center at a busy intersection; there is a local standard for Level of Service (LoS) that is acceptable at that intersection, with the addition of the shopping center that LoS will be reduced if not mitigated by improvements.  In regards to the GPT project there will be additional and easily measurable traffic at the intersections of public roadways with the BNSF line.  

On behalf of the citizens of Whatcom County, the Port of Bellingham has a direct interest in understanding and mitigating transportation impacts to public properties owned by the port, notably in the City of Bellingham’s Fairhaven and Waterfront Districts but also, in general, impacts that may accrue at various crossings throughout the county causing notable delays to commerce on county roadways.     

There are quantifiable costs for traffic delays that prevent business, commercial or commuter activities from ready access to truck routes, state highways and major county roadways historically utilized by Whatcom County businesses and residents.  As such, please include in the EIS a complete analysis and possible mitigations for traffic impacts that consider both the additional burdens from auto traffic and the effects of increased rail traffic throughout the county. 

Furthermore, per WAC 197-11-448 the EIS may consider “the general welfare, social, economic, and other requirements…in making final decisions.”     

Private enterprise should not unduly burden the public by shifting responsibilities and costs onto that public when that enterprise has no broad public purpose.  This statement is reinforced by Whatcom County Code, Section 20.88.130(6): the proposed major development “Will not impose uncompensated requirements for public expenditures for additional utilities, facilities and services, and will not impose uncompensated costs on other property owned.”   

Whereas the Port of Bellingham is chartered to directly serve the public within the bounds of Whatcom County and indirectly the public in our region, it is inherent in that charter that the port has “pledge[d]…to be a responsible trustee of our publicly owned assets”, in part, by appraising projects of significance, such as GPT, where the project has wide ranging economic impacts.   

To that end, it is in the best interest of the people of Whatcom County that the Port of Bellingham request that the EIS thoroughly consider the economic impacts, both positive and negative, of the GPT proposal on Whatcom County’s various cities, the county itself and the region serving or being served by Whatcom County.  

The Port of Bellingham was chartered by a vote of the people 92 years ago to serve public interests throughout Whatcom County and, by extension of those interests, the northwestern region of Washington State. The port owns, on behalf of the people of Whatcom County, substantial real estate holdings directly affected by the proposed project. Furthermore, as a key economic development agency for Whatcom County, the port has an interest in efforts that impact the county and regional economy.  It is in the spirit of fully understanding the effects of the project on this county that the Port of Bellingham requests the NEPA and SEPA processes engage a robust analysis of the transportation and economic impacts in developing the Gateway Pacific Terminal EIS.

 

 With most sincere regards,

____________________________________________

Jim Jorgenson, Commission President 

____________________________________________

Mike McAuley, Commission Vice-President 

____________________________________________

Scott Walker, Commission Secretary