Protect the viability of Puget Sound’s working waterfronts

Eight years in the past, the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma shaped The Northwest Seaport Alliance (NWSA), a brand new mannequin the place the 2 former opponents collectively handle marine terminals to raised compete within the international transport market. The formation aimed to make transformative investments that guarantee the way forward for marine cargo jobs, enterprise exercise, and entry to markets world wide.

The NWSA efficiently navigated cargo surges through the pandemic, by using Terminal 46 in Seattle and the West Hylebos property in Tacoma as emergency aid valves for detangling the nation’s provide chain and speeding Washington agriculture out to market.

Industrial properties alongside the Seattle waterfront and Tacoma Tideflats generate vital financial advantages for our state. Seattle’s zoned industrial lands, which give 30% of the town’s tax income and solely take up 12% of the house, present dependable income and financial development to satisfy our area’s wants. As port leaders we’re keenly conscious that waterfront property in each harbors is a restricted useful resource and below fixed menace of encroaching improvement.

After greater than a 12 months of negotiations with the town of Seattle, Mayor Bruce Harrell launched an affordable compromise proposal that protects the pursuits of business and residents alike. We’re glad that the mayor acknowledges maritime worth as demonstrated by means of his 2023 Maritime and Industrial Lands legislative bundle.

The primary argument for loosening protections on industrial zoned lands stems from builders proposing housing in maritime industrial zones.  There is no such thing as a query that Washington’s inexpensive housing disaster hurts our state. It impacts our workforce, fairness, financial system and setting.

The necessity for extra inexpensive housing is why the Port of Seattle joined advocates in Olympia pushing to increase housing density and improvement in residentially zoned areas, notably these with entry to mass transit.  Nonetheless, the argument to construct housing in designated maritime industrial zones raises vital financial and fairness issues as each business and residents will undergo. It’s unwise to create issues the place they don’t at present exist.

By their nature, industrial zones can’t each be dense with industrial exercise and dense with faculties, parks, grocery shops, libraries and neighborhood facilities. Housing provide and industrial lands are so essential to our future that they deserve their very own methods.

Our area’s companies and workforce rely upon a robust, aggressive port and the associated industrial ecosystem in Puget Sound. Terminal 46, situated south of downtown Seattle, is a deep-water terminal with handy accessibility for cargo vessels. As a essential public asset, strategic element of port infrastructure for worldwide commerce and a uncommon asset for maritime industrial exercise, it should not be encumbered.

When commerce prospers, Washington as an entire advantages. As commissioners, we fastidiously contemplate enterprise alternatives with the enter of stakeholders, comparable to neighborhood members, tribes, employees, inland agriculture and the setting. It’s our obligation to color a imaginative and prescient for a profitable port, and it’s that intentional course of that drove the unanimous vote by managing members in March to protect Terminal 46 and maximize the worth and utility of the working waterfront. If we permit future hostile improvement or have been to promote it off to the best bidder, it will likely be gone for good.

Preserving industrial lands is essential for our ports and our financial system and we’re hopeful the Seattle Metropolis Council will approve the economic lands bundle with out dismantling maritime industrial facilities.

The NWSA accepts a compromise to permit for lodging within the Stadium Space with a prohibition on residential housing. This can be a cheap method that helps public security whereas defending the viability of Seattle’s working waterfront and demanding freight routes that service the Larger Seattle area.

As commissioners, our focus stays on using maritime property to create long-term job alternatives, financial development, sustainability and doing what’s in the very best curiosity of the general public we characterize, not appeasing billionaire developer pursuits. The mayor’s Maritime and Industrial Lands bundle creates stronger protections for the historic industrial areas of which our area’s financial system rests.