Come to the Port of Bellingham Meeting
Tuesday, March 31  3 pm and 6 pm
1801 Roeder Avenue  (Port offices)
(There will be comment periods at 3 pm and also at 6 pm)
If you can, attend the meeting and let Port Commissioners know that the agreement they have negotiated doesn’t meet the need of our community: 
We need more time for the public to learn about the development agreement, we need to have some guarantee of living wage jobs in the agreement and we want don’t want to give away the waterfront.

If you can’t attend the meeting, send an e-mail to each of them:

Dan Robbins         danr@portofbellingham.com
Mike McAuley      mikem@portofbellingham.com
Jim Jorgensen       jimj@portofbellingham.com
Background:  The Port of Bellingham has been in negotiations with a developer, Harcourt,  for the development of the Granary Building and the 10 acres around it.  There are many problems with this Master Development Agreement:

• Lack of public input:  After months of negotiations, the Port has given the public two weeks to comment on a 195 page document! They plan on inking the development on March 31.
• Corporate welfare for the developer–The Port is selling the Granary Building, a 0.6 acre parcel, for $200,000.  Could you buy a house for that little in Bellingham?  The Port is selling the land around the Granary for $20 per square foot–a drop-dead bargain for prime waterfront land.
• No provisions for living-wage jobs–The development agreement has no provisions for the types of businesses that will be created and no provisions for living-wage jobs.
• An end to industrial jobs on the waterfront–The development agreement allows Harcourt to petition for a change in zoning of the logpond area from “Waterfront Industrial Mixed Use” to “Waterfront Industrial Commercial Mixed Use”, effectively giving away the opportunity to create light industrial, living-wage jobs on the waterfront.

To read the Master Development Agreement, go to http://www.portofbellingham.com/DocumentCenter/View/5153