A New Waterfront

Tall buildings, tall price for redevelopment

By Tim Johnson · Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Years in the making, the Port of Bellingham last week released the preliminary draft of the master plan for Bellingham’s Waterfront District. A citizen’s advisory group received their copies of the plan and walked the site with port staff. The public will soon get its first chance to see and comment on the joint port and city plan to redevelop 220 acres of waterfront industrial land.

“It is a huge task, a huge waterfront and a huge project with lots of moving parts,” commented Jeff Hegedus, who chairs the Waterfront Advisory Group. The WAG has been helping the port authority develop the plan for more than four years—the group held its 50th meeting last week. “Largely, I think, the goals expressed at the outset of this process have been carried forward.”

A tome of more than 100 pages plus supplemental materials, the plan imagines a redevelopment scale that could take 30 to 50 years to complete, with the first activity expected in and around the Granary Building area at Central and Roeder avenues. Officials envision the effort will strongly tie the port’s plans for economic development along the central waterfront with city plans for urban renewal and revitalization of Old Town and adjacent areas.

The port expects to deliver the plan to Bellingham planners in September. That triggers a series of public reviews that will continue through the fall.

“The Port of Bellingham and the City of Bellingham have joined together to create a vision and develop a clear path to transforming this vacant brownsfield site into a thriving mixed-use urban neighborhood,” the plan notes in opening chapters. In 2005, the port acquired approximately 137 acres of waterfront property and tidelands adjacent to Bellingham Bay. Much of the property had been owned by the Georgia-Pacific Corp., which operated a pulp and tissue mill on the site.

The pace of redevelopment depends on uncertain factors, such as the health of the economy, the willingness of private investors to take on a waterfront project of this scale, and the availability of city dollars to construct utilities, bridges and streets for the site. Primary funds for the planned environmental cleanup of the site are mostly in place from state and federal sources.

Overall cost to prepare the site for development is pegged at $364 million, up from a cost of $330 million the port estimated in 2006.

“But let’s pull the issue apart a little bit,” Mike Stoner, the port’s environmental director, said. “From my vantage point, it looks like we’re staying pretty well on track. In 2008 the port and city updated the project cost total to be about $358 million, and the current cost estimate is $361 million. It’s true that things tend to cost more over time, but the current estimate is relatively comparable to the original 2006 estimate.”

The new estimate includes $11 million for the relocation of the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe rail line that cuts through the center of the site. A plan to move the rail line along the bluffs failed to receive federal stimulus grants last year, although the state has agreed to absorb some of the cost.

Economics only tops the list of continuing concerns, which include the level of cleanup planned for heavily contaminated areas of the site, the amount of space devoted to public use, buffers between the shoreline and built environment and even the character of that environment. A proposal to connect the site to Central Avenue—an area long planned for a public boardwalk—was cast aside for a modified street design. Several buildings, once slated for demolition, are retained in the latest plan.

The plan anticipates building heights and view corridors, with heights approaching 200 feet nearer those bluffs. Buildings of up to 100 feet could be built in against bluffs in the southwest portion of the site. That’s roughly the height of the 14-story Bellingham Towers. For comparison, the old GP digester, the tallest structure remaining on the waterfront, is about 150 feet high. Building heights would be lower nearer the water, with open space near the shoreline.

“Virtually all of the shoreline will be retained in public ownership” primarily for parks, Stoner explained. “Of the 22 acres that will be left available for development, about six is planned to be sold to Western Washington University. Of the 16 remaining,” he said, “the city has expressed interest in acquiring some portion around the Granary Building. So the property available to sell to a private developer ends up being quite small, maybe 10 acres.”

“I continue to have doubts that the building heights or proposed densities will be achieved,” WAG member John Blethen said. Blethen proposed an alternative site plan in 2008 with a few of the features of the current plan, including a realignment of streets along an east-west axis. “Will the public accept buildings of that height on their waterfront? We’ll see.”

Part of the complexity of the master plan is due to the fact that a number of groups control critical portions of the site, Stoner said, with the port owning the largest share. The State of Washington retains ownership of the tidelands and certain other areas.

“The Port owns about 165 acres of the 220-acre project area, including 137 acres that was purchased from GP, 4.6 that we purchased from Chevron, about 17 that we already owned in the Marine Trades Area,” Stoner said. The Marine Trades Area includes the site of a new marina. The port also owns another five acres at the shipping terminal at the end of Whatcom Waterway.

“The city owns property at Colony Wharf and the RG Haley property at Cornwall Beach,” Stoner commented. The city plans to remediate the RG Haley property and connect that with a boardwalk extension south to Boulevard Park. Work on that extension could begin as early as 2012.

“The port intends to retain ownership of all its property in Marine Trades, including the Clean Ocean Marina,” Stoner said, as well as the shipping terminal.  “In the forseeable future, the port will retain ownership of the 42-acre Log Pond,” an area in the midsection of the site that received extensive contaminants from decades of GP industrial operations. Contaminants were capped in place, a remedy the agency plans to extend to most of Whatcom Waterway.

During the walking tour of the site, Stoner noted the port was still considering what to do with the extensive GP wharf. In the near-term, he said, the agency could sell moorage to idle ships. Long-term, the agency plans to disassemble the hard edge of a wharf and replace it with a soft, natural shoreline.

“I think the group continues to have concerns that a 50-foot setback from the shoreline for construction may not be enough,” Hegedus said. “We have assurances it is sufficiently protective, but does it create sufficient crowd space, room for pedestrians and bikes, public access, amenities and so on? That stretch—from the Granary Building to the Log Pond—is the jewel. That is the key to the success of this site.”

Overarching all, though, is the economics, Hegedus admitted. That dominates advisory group members’ thoughts.

Responding to the group’s questions about the burden of redevelopment on local taxpayers, Stoner replied, “That is certainly not the intent. From the beginning, the intent of the port and city was to rebuild the waterfront economy and the tax base and reconnect the community to its waterfront. The goal is to have the waterfront lift the rest of the community, not be a drain on local citizens.

“During its industrial heyday, the waterfront was a big tax generator, but that tapered off as GP downsized,” Stoner explained. ”Estimated city taxes for the GP property in 1994 were $177,000, in 2004 that had dropped to $71,000, but by full buildout the City was estimated to receive $2.2 to 3 million annually.” Stoner admitted the full buildout of the site may take longer than originally planned, “but in the end, the improvement to the tax base should be about the same.

Similarly, he said, the port will pay for its share through state environmental cleanup funds paid for by oil companies,  moorage and property leases. “Again,” he said, “we’re planning on paying for our share of public investment through revenue streams from within the project area itself.”

“I have yet to hear an analysis of this plan by experienced developers and would welcome that dialogue about its inherent costs and practicality,” Blethen commented. “We need to figure out some ways to partner with developers and let this development pay for much of its infrastructure costs as we require of other developments.

“I am concerned about the cost of this plan, at a time when the city has many needs, without private sector participation. I believe that a realistic staged development is doable, but I have concerns about the cost of this plan even in its staged form,” he said.

With the Master Plan approved by the end of the year, or early 2011, officials hope to begin work on a couple of areas as early as next summer.