It’s time for the Port to revive its planning process for the New Market Industrial Campus

Helen Wheatley

Courtesy of the Thurston Conservation District

The Tumwater City Council hearing on November 30, and the failing negotiation between the city and the Port of Olympia, is just the latest episode of a long debate about the New Market Industrial Campus that has been going on since the early 2000s. That’s when the warehouse boom began to spill into Thurston County.

The new century saw Target, Home Depot and Wal-Mart making high-profile moves in Lacey and Tumwater that supercharged local debates about land use and the future of retail and warehousing in the county. The Port of Tacoma was investing millions of dollars to try to develop a distribution center on Rocky Prairie near Millersylvania Park. Where would all those buildings and pavement and trucks go? How would they impact the environment and the quality of life?  Where should local governments draw the line?

By 2006, a number of warehouse developers, including Panattoni, had expressed interest in building large warehouses near the airport. It was at this time that Global developer ProLogis set its sights on the New Market campus, proposing a 32-acre project similar to the one that Panattoni is considering now. 

A spokesperson for the Salmon Creek Basin neighborhood, E. J. Zita, listed concerns over flooding, loss of trees, traffic and the loss of quality of life in the neighborhoods.  She said then, as she says now as Port Commissioner, “These projects need to be considered for their cumulative impacts.”

Its use history, soils and hydrology made the New Market campus a complicated piece of real estate. An environmental appeal against the ProLogis project was rejected by the Hearing Examiner, further roiling the community. The Tumwater City Council adopted an emergency ordinance limiting building size and traffic. 

ProLogis withdrew. Lacey’s Hawk’s Prairie building boom drew the attention of warehouse developers, leaving New Market behind.,

Friends of Rocky Prairie continued to fight their years’ long battle to preserve the rare glacial prairie habitat from the development fever of the Port of Tacoma, reminiscent of the struggle in the 1960s to save the precious Nisqually Delta from becoming an extension of Tacoma’s Port. The Thurston County Commission voted unanimously in 2020 not to rezone, which would have opened the door to a huge logistics center at Rocky Prairie. But even with that door closed, Commissioners now grapple with pressures to rezone farmland to allow rural industrial warehousing.

What has the Port of Olympia learned from all of this? Not much, it seems. Port Director Gibboney and Port Commission President Joe Downing seem determined to see history repeat itself in a cycle of battles between community members and outside developers over the scale of development, appropriate zoning and environmental impacts.

It doesn’t have to be this way. After ProLogis pulled out years ago, the Port of Olympia almost got it right. Recognizing that resolving problems with the property first would help provide certainty to attract the right kind of development, the Port went to work on revising its old plan for the New Market and Tumwater Town Centre properties. The new draft Real Estate Master Plan, which provided a guide for where development could go with appropriate buffers and mitigation of environmental impacts, was completed in 2018.

That plan can still be found on the website of the Thurston Regional Planning Council (TRPC.org). But it only exists in cyberspace.  But the Port Commission never followed through to implement it. The next step to turn development plans into action would have been to do the environmental impact analysis, and the Commission would not face that. It is no coincidence that the current negotiations between the Port and the City of Tumwater have also floundered over the Port’s refusal to come to grips with the environmental realities of the site.

Without an updated strategic plan that can take care of impacts using the whole New Market property, developers are left to do all the environmental mitigation work themselves, on the site they want to develop.  That takes deep pockets. It wasn’t worthwhile for ProLogis. That’s why Panattoni still hasn’t put forward a single actual project proposal for New Market.  And the hesitancy of developers in the face of those costs is why the Tumwater City Council has thrown up its hands and told the Port that it can’t agree to so many unknowns.

With a Real Estate Master Plan,  the whole campus can be used to combine appropriately scaled industrial development with environmental mitigation, while also meeting other community needs. For example, low-impact stormwater design can be compatible with recreational use and preserving mature groves of trees.  And it’s a no-brainer that developers would prefer to meet environmental criteria outside the property they want to build on.

Plus, there’s another problem with shelving the New Market real estate plan and letting developers pick their projects based only on profitability.  When an individual project is built, it will strain the system and create a higher hurdle for the next project.  After one or two plum spots are built out, the rest of the site may become almost impossible to market anyway.

The public has already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of public input for the New Market Real Estate Master Plan. Yet the Port has ignored it all. The latest proposal for a strange, strained and unworkable interlocal agreement is no substitute for a rational campus-wide design.

It is time for the Port of Olympia to pay attention to its own Vision Statement, written at the same time it was creating the strategic plan for New Market: “A Port that contributes to a more resilient community.” Resilience comes from the equal and integrated balance of economic opportunity, environmental stewardship, and support for community assets. It’s time to finish the job and implement a better strategic plan for the New Market Industrial Campus.

Helen Wheatley currently serves on the Board of Supervisors of the Thurston Conservation District. In 2019 she ran unsuccessfully for the seat on the Port of Olympia Commission held by Commissioner Joe Downing.  Her views are her own and not necessarily those of The JOLT's staff or board of directors. 

Correction: 12/7/21 - We clarified  Wheatley's former candidacy.