Everett’s post-mill future
Published 10:37 am Saturday, September 1, 2012
The Kimberly Clark mill is Everett’s Rorschach test. For history nerds, the mill is a 1940s, sepia-toned snapshot of workers with lunch pails. For others, it’s a toxic graveyard, a sacred space, a 66-acre stage waiting for the curtain to rise.
Everett’s economic future (and, by extension, the social and cultural life of the next generation) is anchored to this shoulder of industrial land that fronts Port Gardner Bay. Decisions by city planners, along with the willingness of Kimberly Clark to honor its corporate principles, will ripple out for decades. (A once-every-century planning moment is just that.)
After the mill was shuttered earlier this year, the Everett City Council passed a zoning moratorium on a 93-acre swath of land, the Central Waterfront Planning Area, which includes the former mill property. The mission was to call a time out and blunt future uses that might create grief for residents, especially noise and odor pollution. Fish processing or a crud-belching factory? The era of “smells like jobs” has passed.
City planners have settled on four options, each a piece of a larger mosaic to generate jobs. The various alternatives hold a mirror to how citizens conceive Everett’s future. And threaded in between are quality-of-life issues such as recreation and public access which also wide-angle the importance of linking downtown to the waterfront.
The first alternative, the existing condition/no-action plan, is devoid of imagination. The other options are more inspired, however. A business park with public access is a sweet possibility. Its vision, the Planning Department reports, is “A high-quality waterfront business park/employment center with primarily non-water-dependent uses focused around a public-access and trail system, connected to downtown, where people can work, visit, and enjoy visual contact with the water and waterfront activities.” What’s not to love (other than the robotic-sounding, “enjoy visual contact?”)
The devil is in the footnotes. Not taking advantage of a deepwater port is a nature-produced opportunity missed. At the same time, marine commerce and cargo handling would curtail public access. Is there a sensible-center option? (To draw potential investors, Herald Business Journal columnist Tom Hoban recommends Everett indemnify some of the clean-up and environmental risks.)
Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson is wisely focused on ensuring public participation. Stephanson’s core objective is to preserve family-wage jobs by safeguarding industrially zoned land and attracting sustainable business.
The final piece that needs to be harmonized is the company itself. Kimberly-Clark must breathe life into its stated belief in corporate social responsibility (especially after sacking 700 souls) by ensuring that property buyers are community-focused and willing to work with stakeholders to open up the waterfront. Corporate penance, we believe, shouldn’t be an oxymoron.
Citizens do have a voice. The next public hearing is scheduled for Sept. 18 at 6:30 p.m. in Everett Station’s Weyerhaeuser Room. Go or forever hold your peace.
