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Planners Favor Small Marina: City Panel Favors More Open Space

Posted on: Saturday, 8 April 2006, 15:00 CDT

By John Stark, The Bellingham Herald, Bellingham, Wash.

Apr. 8--Saturday, April 8, 2006

If a marina is built inside a wastewater treatment lagoon on Bellingham Bay, it should be a small one, Bellingham Planning Commission members agree.

In a Thursday City Hall work session to draw up recommendations for the Bellingham City Council, commissioners stopped short of a full endorsement of the marina the Port of Bellingham plans to build inside the lagoon it acquired as part of its takeover of Georgia-Pacific West Inc. real estate in January 2005. That marina would contain up to 450 slips, with enhanced aquatic habitat and public open space for strolling around the breakwater.

Commissioners agreed that the open space envisioned in the port's marina plan isn't ample enough, even in an enhanced version that the port offered last week after an all-day brainstorming session between port staffers and interested citizens. They recommended that the marina design include a park that could require filling in as much as half the roughly 30 acres inside the lagoon.

The commission's marina recommendation follows a plan developed by Bellingham architect Dave Christensen in cooperation with John Blethen, who served on the Waterfront Futures Group. That group spent about 18 months developing a broad vision for the Bellingham waterfront.

The port could make do with a smaller marina by providing space for dry stack boat storage on adjacent real estate, commissioners suggested.

Port Executive Director Jim Darling said he wasn't sure whether cutting back the marina would make economic sense.

"There are definitely economies of scale," Darling said.

While a final design for the marina is not complete, Darling observed that the port already has cut back on the size of the marina to a 450-slip maximum, to provide both public spaces and aquatic habitat. The lagoon is big enough to hold more than 600 slips, he said.

He also noted that the installation of a large park inside the lagoon would have to be paid for by the city of Bellingham. Mayor Mark Asmundson has said such a park would cost millions.

All the waterfront design schemes being discussed already include large new parks along Whatcom Waterway and on the Cornwall landfill site, at the southern end of the 137 acres that the port acquired from G-P.

Whatever the final outcome, Planning Commission Chairman Jim Bishop said commissioners already had achieved their main goal - opening up a public debate on the marina issue in the face of port officials' insistence that the decision on the marina already had been made.

"That was our main mission going down this journey," he said.

Bishop and other planning commission members said they were eager to see economic analysis of waterfront redevelopment that would put firmer price tags on the cost of alternatives for park and street construction.

Reach John Stark at 715-2274 or john.stark@bellinghamherald .com

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Bellingham Herald, Bellingham, Wash.

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Source: The Bellingham Herald, Wash.

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