Everett Historical Commission

DRAFT Everett Historical Commission Minutes June 23, 2015 Members Present Members Absent Visitors City Staff Neil Anderson Jim Staniford Judy Tuohy, City Council Dave Koenig Bill Vincent Terrie Battuello Jan Meston Jack O’Donnell Brandon Whitaker Ross Johnson Arnold Morrison Dave Ramstad Mark Soine Steve Fox Bobby Olsen Dale Good Allan White Laura Cameron-Behee Bobby Olsen: Welcome to the Historical Commission meeting. Our first item is approval of the minutes for the May meeting. Approval of Minutes Mark Soine moved to approve the minutes as written. Laura Cameron-Behee seconded the motion which passed unanimously. Citizen Comments Dave Ramstad: I wanted to let everybody know that the Everett Museum of History’s “First 50 Years of Everett” photo collection was opened last Thursday at the Schack Art Center. There are 250 images that have been in storage for years. The art center was just packed with people who found their way into the middle rooms, saw the photos and were quite wowed. The exhibit will be up until the end of August. The exhibit is also partially thanks to the efforts of Commissioner Neil Anderson and his wife Glenda who coordinated the idea of the exhibit with the director. The Everett Museum’s first photo exhibit is hanging in the new Hampton Inn on Wall Street. It’s a modest display of Everett waterfront. At the opening in the Schack Art Center, we met the grandson of the director of the Weyerhaeuser Company in its first years. We met William Bailey who came up from Portland. He’s writing a book for his family about William Boner who was the director of Weyerhaeuser from about 1910 to 1925. He supervised the construction of Mills A, B and C, and was a powerful man in the City of Everett for a long time. Mr. Bailey doesn’t know Everett very well, but he’s going to want to spend some time with David Dilgard in the Northwest Room. He wants to see his office in the Weyerhaeuser Building at the Port, which we’ll coordinate. Commission Comments Jack O’Donnell: I just have a couple of dates. Sunday, May 21st, was 20th anniversary of the beginning of the demolition of the administration building in front of Everett High School’s main building. On July 14th it will be 100 years since the Liberty Bell was in Everett at the end of Wall Street. Steve Fox: I went on a ride on the Mill Town trail and really enjoyed that. Is there any update on the signs for the trail? Jan Meston: I don’t have an update, so I’ll follow up with Tim Miller. Weyerhaeuser Building Move to Boxcar Park Terrie Battuello: I am the Chief of Business Development for the Port of Everett, and have Brandon Whitaker, Waterfront Place Project Manager, with me this evening. We are here to talk to you about the Weyerhaeuser Building. The Waterfront Place Project is a 1.5 million square foot mixed use development on 65 acres of former brownfields that the Port has cleaned up at the marina. The plan was approved by the City in January 2015 after a long process of the Port and the City working together to revise and improve the plan to best reflect the needs and desires of the community. The goal of the project is to create a site that supports 2000 jobs and preserves 17 acres of public waterfront access. There are about 660 housing units in the development, but the goal of the Port is to create jobs and public access. The strategy is to make sure we unify the marina and the uplands into a high quality commercial, recreation and residential community that reflects the unique qualities, history and character of Everett’s maritime traditions. The project will create 15 public gathering spaces including two large parks, a 4-mile continuous walking and biking trail, and catalyze marina renewal to sustain it into the future. The site will support 2,075 jobs, 180 new hotel rooms, and a variety of retail and hospitality spaces. There is a range of densities that could be developed, which gives the plan flexibility as we don’t have developers identified yet. There is $33 million in Port-planned investment in the infrastructure, roads and the parks to bring in $340 million in private investment. One of our important goals is to create a sense of place. There are a number of recreational opportunities, kite boarders off the Jetty, and the historical interpretive trail which tells the history of the waterfront. Building on that theme, the Port wants to have the site reflect history and tell the story of Everett through its development. This project has only 5 districts in its 65 acres. The districts have different characters and different goals. The Craftsman District is intended to support the maritime industry and to preserve services for boaters. Fisherman’s Harbor is more of a retail/mixed use development. The Esplanade wraps its arms around all the districts and connects things through public spaces book ended by two parks. The Wharf Edge is primarily residential, and the Millwright District is where most of the jobs will be created. We will have site-wide design features like our benches, garbage cans, etc. and each district will have its own landscaping palate and the story of its past will be told in the artifacts along the trail. 2 We have recently completed painting the Weyerhaeuser Building, a $278,000 project. Many of the finer details were hand painted. We have also replaced the roof. We’ve done some interior work and more is planned for later. It is really important to us that the Weyerhaeuser Room be incorporated into the Waterfront Place Project as a significant building, one of the last remaining significant buildings on our site. We want people to have access to the building. The streets in Waterfront Place are named for jobs in the mill industry. We want the project to reflect the working person that is the Everett community. The main street is the Millwright Loop; there are Sawyer Street and Timberman. Those are all names of jobs in the mill industry. We are planning to move the Weyerhaeuser Room from its current corner next to Naval Station Everett down to the very end of Waterfront Place in Boxcar Park. This park is our tribute to the railroad industry. We plan to move the Weyerhaeuser Building in the first or second quarter of 2016. We have advanced the move because the City is working on a pedestrian bridge to connect Grand Avenue to the waterfront as part of a system that will carry their excess storm water to prevent Grand Avenue from flooding in the future. We need to move the building before the bridge is built. We plan to call the building the “Weyerhaeuser Muse” because the wood and features on the outside of the building were there to display the talents of the woodworking industry. We want to use the building as a performance venue as well as a clubhouse for the marina organizations like the Power Squadron and the sailing clubs. We will build a stage off the back of the building. We’ve hired Miller Hall and are working with historians and heritage people at the state to develop a stage plan that will be complimentary to the building. The stage would be a venue for live performances of all types. The stage will face out toward the water so sound from concerts will carry out over the water rather than up to the bluff. There will be a kite flying pavilion to the right and a “Rocky Islands,” a children’s play area, to the left, and a scooped out grass amphitheater for the stage. We are working on a parking court and a garden for the front of the building. It originally stood in a mill yard, so it would not have had much landscaping. However, David Dilgard thought it was appropriate that we tip our hat to the Tudor and World War I era influences with a symmetrical garden surrounding the building. Boxcar Park will be built in two phases, one with the Esplanade and the second part with the Wharf’s End condominiums or apartments. We have a 30% design for you this evening. The parking area will be grass-crete, open to people throwing the frisbee. We want the aesthetic appeal of the building visible from the roadway. The Village Theatre is very supportive of the idea of the stage. Just to move the Weyerhaeuser Building to the park and get it reopened with the grounds around it, not including the stage, will cost $1.8 million. It is a major component of our project, a jewel in the crown of Waterfront Place. Mark Soine: What is the plan for the current location of the Weyerhaeuser Building? Terrie Battuello: We hope to redevelop that into a retail location. We hope to entice the 7,000 to 8,000 folks on the naval base onto our property. Neil Anderson: I think this is a great location for the Weyerhaeuser Building. I like the name Boxcar Park. Will there be any interpretive information at the park explaining the name “Boxcar Park”? Will 3 something like the cover of Jack and Larry O’Donnell’s waterfront book be put on a sign at the park showing box cars full of shingles lined up? Terrie Battuello: We have several interim public access projects we need to do before we can do before we can start this project, and one is a picnic shelter at the future Boxcar Park. It will have canvases that are shaped like kites which say “Everett, Washington Red Cedar” as though it’s old canvas. We do have several areas for interpretation where we plan to tell the commercial fishing story, the story of the environmental clean-up, and the story of the railroad and the fact that this area was originally not even land, it was a railroad line to the shingle mills. We also want to tell the story of the Tulalips because it was part of their native territory. In the Millwright District there will be a clock tower that will be 10 feet above the roof top, or up to 75 feet. That is called the Workmen’s Clock. We actually have a museum piece that was the Weyerhaeuser time clock in the mill in 1850. We plan an artist’s competition to design this Workmen’s Clock to be like the historic clock. That will be the main feature as you drive in. Neil Anderson: It would be something if you could ever find an old box car in Snoqualmie on the siding and paint it the Seattle to Manitoba to match the book cover and put it in the park. Terrie Battuello: That’s a good idea. We’ve been selecting the furnishings for these districts. We have found a line of furniture that is built with rail ties. We also found some benches that are shaped like a trestle with wood inserts, and we could use logos from old train cars to mark on the benches Bobby Olsen: Do you have public restrooms at the Esplanade? That would be a great opportunity to use a shipping container or an old box car for the building. Or you could do something similar for a storage or maintenance type facility made out of a box car. Bill Vincent: Where is the Equator on the drawing? Terrie Battuello: It’s actually in the North Pier. Dave Ramstad: Would it be possible to carve a cove into the fill and filled with sand to make a small saltwater beach? Terrie Battuello: We do have an interactive water-spray park. Our landscape architect thinks it’s important to incorporate a water feature in each of the districts because there’s really not a safe way to interact with the water in Puget Sound. We considered some sunset steps that would allow you to walk into the water, but the current is such that it is unsafe to do that. But we plan to have faux tide pools, but that is still being developed. We want kids to have the experience of going to the water right on the shoreline, so they feel like they have been to the beach. Our goal is to create a destination that tells the story of Everett’s heritage, something that is so unique and so interesting that people will drive at least 15 miles to see and be a part of this community. It’s exciting for us. Dave Ramstad: It may be possible to find a used box car, but if it isn’t a complete box car that is painted in original 1914 colors, perhaps a mural or canvases would do. There’s a fellow in Edmonds that does fantastic work. Some portrayal of the railroad and its connection to carrying the lumber products around the world would be terrific. 4 Bobby Olsen: I think you guys have done a great job of telling stories already. I think that there are plenty of interpretive signs at the Port that weren’t there five years ago, and a lot of people in the north end that look down on the waterfront are really excited about what’s going to happen. Once you move the Weyerhaeuser Building, co you know what will be occupying the interior of the building? Terrie Battuello: There are a number of clubs – the Power Squadron, the Mill City Sailing Club, Sea Scouts and others – that will be displaced by some of the development. They are really important to the viability of the marina and the community, so we want to place them inside the building. The Weyerhaeuser Building will act as a clubhouse for the marine-related clubs. The offices in the Weyerhaeuser will be provided to those organizations as their office and they may have their meetings in the building. Bobby Olsen: That would also be a nice place for interpretive center. Maybe you already have something with the clock tower and things like that. Terrie Battuello: If we do end up being able to fund a visitor’s center or something, which our marketing people say we will eventually need, that would be a really good use there. But we want to make sure we provide space for our marine-related groups. We are working with the Yacht Club separately. We are looking for a different solution for this. I have been working with a subcommittee of the Yacht Club for two years to develop a variety of alternatives they are considering. There is a 50- room hotel planned for the area where the Yacht Club is, and one alternative they are considering is for the hotel to build a club room in the hotel. All the Yacht Club would have an access key to that room. We have also offered for them to build a new facility at the south end where our former marina office was, but that would cost about $1.5 million. Their membership is not large enough to develop that kind of money. I think if they do a hybrid where they go into the hotel; it would be a good plan. We have to wait for our RFPs to go out and for us to develop a relationship with a developer for that to emerge. I’m responsible for both the success of the marina and the upland. We have several yacht clubs that are very critical to the marina’s continued success. We will make sure there is something that allows them to continue to thrive. Bobby Olsen: But the structure that’s there now will be demolished? Terrie Battuello: Yes, that has outlived its usefulness. Dave Koenig: They have to keep some of it to rebuild it. Bobby Olsen: Is the Millwright road a one-way or two-way street? Will drivers always see the Weyerhaeuser Building from the front? Terrie Battuello: It is a two-way street, so you will see either the front or the back of the building. Brandon Whitaker: We have some landscaping that will be somewhat of a shield. The back of the building is not as aesthetically unique as the front façade which faces south, so as you are coming west there will not be landscaping that will block that view of the building. Bobby Olsen: You mentioned the pedestrian bridge down from the bluff will have 26-foot clearance over the tracks. Where does that bridge drop you down on the waterfront? Terrie Battuello: That is not my project, but I understand that it will drop down into the site of the farmer’s market, so the market will be moved either to the south or central pier next year. We want the 5 market, too. Looking from Grand Avenue, you won’t be able to see the bridge; it is dropped below the bank. You will go down on a pathway to get to the bridge. It will be a covered pedestrian bridge. Mark Soine: Are there sketches of the bridge that are available now? Terrie Battuello: I think there is a 3-D model of it. Dale Good: Is there a completion date for the Waterfront Place project? Terrie Battuello: Based on our work, we think it will take 7 to 10 years to see full build-out. We intend for construction to start in Fisherman’s Harbor in 2016. Dave Koenig: I think the bridge is planned to be done in 2017. Arnold Morrison: What funding do you already have? Terrie Battuello: We have a five-year capital facilities plan. The first three years, funding for phases 1 and 2, are fully funded. The Port Commission does not approve funding in years 4 and 5. The remainder of the fund will come from the private sector. The Port receives about $4.5 million from tax levies, but all of that money is spent on clean-up or public access trail building. All the money for our business lines and profit-making entities comes from profit. The marine terminals are helping us pay for this. Arnold Morrison: Is the Navy involved in any of this? Terrie Battuello: No. But the Commanding Officer went over the plans. She was one of my cohorts in graduate school. She really likes it and sees it as an amenity for the service people. Bill Vincent: What will be included in the Craftsman District? Terrie Battuello: That is where Amaron is today. Their lease expires in January 2017 and we are under an agreed order to do our final clean-up on the property under the Amaron building. It will be torn down and all the boat activities that we have in the middle of the pier will be moved into the Craftsman District. We want to ring this district with services. There were about 30 buildings that held marine- related industry that supported the marina, both commercial and recreational fishing. We want to restore that. Our Waterfront Place Center is 95% occupied today. Neil Anderson: We have City Councilmember Judy Tuohy here tonight. I think her mother played a key role in saving the Weyerhaeuser Building when they moved it from the Mill B site. Judy Tuohy: Yes. My mother was the president of the Everett Chamber of Commerce and this was a big project for them. They got the building moved down and the chamber had their offices there for a time. I’m really glad to see this building have more prominence. Neil Anderson: This project will draw a lot of people into the area, and I am wondering if there are any plans to improve the area around the Equator? It’s on the National Register. The ship is what it is, but the surrounding area could use some attention so it’s worthy of a National Register property. The National Register sign is nailed to a post at an angle behind a chainlink fence. I’ve never seen anything like this. 6 Terrie Battuello: I think it was preserved by a grassroots effort, and I don’t know if there has been support for it for a long time. But I will take your message back to Lisa Lafebre at the Port, who is taking care of this. Jack O’Donnell: I like what you’re doing here, and I really like your idea of working the box car theme in. I hope you will explore that idea. Bobby Olsen: The Highline Project in New York, which is somewhat new, is an old elevated rail line that was turned into a public park. It has rails with wildflowers growing between them and other areas where there are rails with concrete pavers in between that are flush in the walkway. Even without a box car, you could have rails embedded somewhere or used as a garden feature. Terrie Battuello: Maybe the Esplanade trail could have pavers that look like a railroad. Additions to the Agenda Jan Meston: A few announcements: I have two copies of the book that Jason Webley produced about the musical “Margaret” about Margaret Rucker. He sent these copies for the Commission’s use, so let me know if you would like to borrow it. We were awarded a state CLG grant to do more inventory work in Claremont. The grant work will begin in October 2016. The Everett Housing Authority (EHA) is planning to demolish the Baker Heights affordable house project. They will be using federal funding for this project, so it must be submitted to the state Department of Archeology and Historic Preservation for review of whether it is potentially eligible for the National Register. EHA will be hiring a consultant to help them develop a report on the history of this housing development and probably inventory forms on representative buildings. We are not sure whether it was originally built as low-income housing or whether it was built to house workers at facilities like Boeing in Everett as part of the war effort. Jack O’Donnell: I think it was both. This development was moving along so slowly that folks started developing the neighborhood between 16th and 19th around Walnut, Maple and Cedar. Those houses went up fast because there was a real need for housing in wartime Everett. Allan White may be able to tell us something about this. Ross Johnson: The motivation for demolishing this housing is that the rehabilitation cost is too high for the rehabilitation value of the buildings. HUD is offering a program where EHA can get housing vouchers for all the people who live there if they tear down the buildings, then they will disperse the low-income throughout the community using the housing vouchers. But this is a limited time offer. But EHA has not decided yet how to use the land after demolition. Dave Koenig: I have an announcement. This will be my last Historical Commission meeting was a staff member. I am leaving the City of Everett. The Historical Commission years ago was part of the Everett Library and was created as part of the U.S. Centennial in 1976. Margaret Riddle and David Dilgard were the staff for the commission. A few years later Mark Nesse, library director, approached me and said it would make more sense for the Historical Commission to be part of Planning because of the issues of interest coming up – design review and historic preservation of buildings, etc. We worked to create an ordinance that made this a Certified Local Government so we were eligible for state grants for 7 historic preservation. We worked with the library to transition this into the Planning Department, which I think was a good decision. Mark Soine: I’ll miss you, Dave. You were with the Historical Commission when I was first appointed in the late 80s, and Jack was on the Commission then, too. Dave Koenig: I was recruited by the City of Marysville to be their Community Development Director. It includes the building department, planning, CDBG program, licensing, and code enforcement. They are interested in my helping them get some projects implemented. The meeting was adjourned at 8:00 p.m. 8