EVERETT — With the economy only slowly pulling out of a serious recession, Port of Everett officials hadn’t been in any rush to revive plans for a $400 million waterfront redevelopment.
“From a demand situation, there’s not a lot of push for us to go out and build something,” John Mohr, the port’s executive director, said last week.
The port had intended to work on a new plan for the marina this year and to wait until next year before it decided just what to do with the property adjacent to the marina.
But that has changed following a recent retreat held by the port’s three commissioners.
None of the three is pushing for construction to begin immediately, but they agree that planning about the future for the two areas should occur together and that the public should be brought into the process sooner rather than later.
“There’s a lot of pent-up emotion out there about what’s going to happen,” said Mark Wolken, commission chairman. “I think people at least need to be brought up to speed about what’s happening. I think that’s really important so that we don’t become the subject of angst.”
The earlier plan to build 660 condominiums and an array of commercial buildings did develop some angst. Critics talked about turning the city’s waterfront over to people rich enough to afford waterfront condos.
And residents of the bluff overlooking the waterfront worried about how building heights would affect their views.
The condos were not built because Chicago developer Maritime Trust couldn’t find financing. Its subsidiary, Everett Maritime, recently went bankrupt and was paid $50,000 by the port to release any claim to the property.
Mohr said the port was fortunate that the development didn’t receive financing because the condo market has collapsed.
“If there’s a bright side in Everett Maritime’s bankruptcy it’s that we didn’t get stuck with something or we didn’t have something built out that is sitting empty,” he said, noting that sitting empty is what’s happened to major condo projects in Seattle and in Bellevue.
Wolken said the Maritime proposal had a lot of good ideas and that the port doesn’t have to start from scratch. He’d like to form a group of people with expertise in a variety of areas to assess things.
“I’d like to use what we already have done that has value and move forward on that basis,” he said. “An advisory group can vet issues for us and give us the pros and cons.”
For example, Wolken noted the Maritime plan called for a public boulevard on the waterfront and other public amenities. If the port can decide what aspects of the plan it likes and where those things should be, it can make decisions about proposals from developers as they come in without worrying about how they would affect other projects.
He’d like to get a group started this spring.
Commissioner Michael Hoffmann said he has a hard time separating plans for the marina and plans for what to do with adjacent land.
“The right thing to do is to make it all one process,” Commissioner Troy McClelland agreed.
Wolken noted that boaters have already made it clear that they want a grocery store near the marina. Deciding now where things like that should go makes sense, he said.
He also noted that the previous development plans didn’t think much about boats and boaters other than that they were nice scenery for the people who would live in the condos.
Mohr agreed.
He noted the previous development called for an area for marine-related businesses but didn’t think much about things like where to put the fuel tanks for the gas dock for boats.
“We figure out the parking, but not the other things like access to repairs and fuel tanks,” Mohr said. “The worst thing you can do is to undersize the facilities that support the marina.”
Mohr agreed that the planning for the marina and for the redevelopment needs to happen together. “We need to figure out how much review work we have to do and how to plug people in” to the process, he said.
Port officials have not determined how the planning will work or set any of the public meetings they intend to have. They’ll discuss the issue more at a commissioner retreat on Tuesday.
Port commission retreat Tuesday
The port’s three commissioners will meet in a retreat session, open to the public at 2 p.m. Tuesday in the Blue Heron Room at 1205 Craftsman Way, Everett.
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