OLYMPIA — Property owners offered more than 70 sites in Snohomish, Island and Skagit counties for the state to consider in its search for a home for a new University of Washington branch campus.
Parcels range in size from 1 to 1,100 acres, and the offers come from private land owners, real estate agents, cities, counties and a state agency. Most locations are in Snohomish County.
“We are glad there is an abundance of choices, and we’ll look at every one of them,” said Deb Merle, higher education policy adviser to Gov. Chris Gregoire.
Friday marked the deadline for people to submit information on land they would sell the state for development into a four-year university campus.
Monday, a state-hired consultant plowed through and worked to organize the stack of submissions, some dozens of pages long with maps, charts and graphs, and others consisting simply of a couple sheets with data gleaned from a multiple listing service.
On Aug. 14 in Stanwood, the first of four public meetings is scheduled for residents to weigh in on the process.
They’ll be able to comment on the various sites and emerging academic plan. Meetings also are set for Aug. 15 in Mount Vernon, Sept. 26 in Oak Harbor and Oct. 3 in Everett.
“The site evaluation process is occurring concurrently with the academic planning,” said Martin Regge, a principal in urban design and planning with NBBJ, the firm contracted to extract from the pile the best location for a campus.
“As the field of potential sites begins to narrow, the academic planning process will help refine the site evaluation criteria,” he said. “The ultimate test will be to determine which sites best enable the university’s academic goals and objectives for the new campus.”
In April, the state approved spending $4 million to help launch a branch campus. Of that, NBBJ received a $1 million contract to analyze land options and recommend a site for a permanent college by Nov. 15. The firm also will suggest an interim location where classes for upper-division students can be held in fall 2008.
Proposals received by Friday contained details on size, boundaries and zoning, plus available utilities and existing structures. There was no minimum parcel size.
Merle said this enabled anyone with land to consider turning in a proposal and created the possibility that several small properties could be assembled into one larger site.
It was not immediately clear why the person offered up their 1-acre parcel, Regge and Merle said.
Among the submissions are ones mentioned publicly, such as land in Stanwood and the former Northern State Hospital in Skagit County.
The city of Everett is pushing two sites — the 75-acre riverfront parcel that was once a Kimberly-Clark plant and 30.5 acres surrounding Everett Station.
Pat McClain, the city’s governmental affairs director, said these would be among the “urban properties” in the mix. Both sites offer “more to the student and student life” because of their proximity to transportation and services, he said.
Another eight potential sites are in a report prepared earlier this year for state lawmakers by Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon. That report went to Merle and is now with NBBJ. The eight sites are scattered throughout the county.
Four cities jointly submitted a proposal for putting a college somewhere on 1,100 acres located between Lake Stevens and Snohomish. The property runs along Highway 9 from its junction with U.S. 2 to 20th Street NE.
Granite Falls and Monroe joined with Lake Stevens and Snohomish on the offer.
The city of Arlington didn’t put it in a proposal of its own but did direct the consultants to consider a sizable parcel owned by Washington State Parks on Highway 9 south of 172nd Street NE.
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