Volume 31 • Issue 10 • October 2006
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A picturesque marina, handy airport,
bustling business park
Port of Skagit serves variety of clients

by Sara L. Geballe


If you’re like most people, when you hear the word “Port,” you probably picture a busy harbor – perhaps like Seattle’s – with large barges, container ships, tall grain silos and colorful tug boats. While historically ports did center exclusively around marine activities, in today’s multifaceted world the term port has taken on a much broader meaning and can include airports, industrial parks, yacht marinas, warehouses and many other business enterprises. What has stayed the same, though, is how ports continue to be the public entities that lend a public presence and access to areas of private economic development.
As Jerry Heller, Executive Director for the Port of Skagit in Burlington puts it, “We are the closest thing in the public sector to a private enterprise. We generate our own cash flow and create jobs for the community.”
Most counties in Washington State have at least one port district. Skagit County has two. The Port of Anacortes, located mostly west of the Swinomish Channel, was created in the 1920s and has a typical marine focus with a deep water shipping port. The second port district is the Port of Skagit, formed in 1964 and encompassing all parts of Skagit County not included in the Anacortes port district. During the economically depressed 1960s, Heller explained, the Port of Skagit was created “under the battle cry of ‘jobs, jobs, jobs.’” Then as now, the Port of Skagit’s primary mission is to boost economic development by helping to create good paying jobs in what has traditionally been an agriculturally-based, rural county.
In daily operations, the Port of Skagit owns and maintains three major sites: the La Conner Marina on the east side of the Swinomish Channel; the Skagit Regional Airport located in Burlington; and the Bayview Business and Industrial Park (BBIP) surrounding the airport. (The Port also owns a fourth, much smaller site in Conway leased to the Bell Lumber & Pole Company.) In total, the Port’s three main facilities encompass about 1,850 acres where approximately 1,200 people are employed in more than 80 different businesses. In addition to the executive director, the Port is run by a three-person commission with each elected commissioner serving a six-year term.
“We encourage business diversity in order to create a stable and resilient economic base,” Heller said. Port officials have worked hard and spent years developing the needed infrastructure to attract and keep a wide variety of successful companies. “We are very proud of the diversity of industries that are currently tenants,” Heller added. Most commercial spaces are leased as lots, and businesses that sign on can either construct their own office and manufacturing facilities, or have the Port build for them.

La Conner Marina
At the picturesque La Conner Marina, the Port of Skagit leases moorage slips for 500 boats and offers dry storage for 200 more. The year-round marina offers a full range of amenities to boaters including showers, rest rooms, laundry facilities and guest moorage. Not surprisingly, many of the 19 business tenants currently at the La Conner Marina have a boating tie-in. For instance, the Tomco Marine Group, Inc. builds pleasure craft designed to look like tug boats, and Pacific Mariner, Inc. makes high-end, 85-foot yachts in the $4 million range. The Port’s holding at the marina encompasses about 45 acres with another 2.5 acres still available for new development.
Skagit Regional Airport
Originally built in 1933 as a federally commissioned Works Progress Administration project, the airfield was taken over by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the start of World War II. During the war it was used as a satellite landing base for the nearby Whidbey Island Naval Air Station. After the war, the airport and the land surrounding it was turned over to Skagit County and became part of the Port of Skagit in 1964.
Today, the Skagit Regional Airport is a general aviation airport, meaning it accommodates only private planes. At present, its two runways do not support commercial flights. About a year ago, Kenmore Air tried to set up a commuter service into Boeing Field, but it didn’t take hold. Some of the problems, Heller speculated, were the escalating costs of fuel, increasingly stringent air travel security requirements and the proximity to Bellingham’s commercial service airport.
But if Skagit County continues to grown, as expected, commercial service may well return to Burlington and succeed. In the meantime, Heller said he has noticed a great increase in private turbojets landing at the airport, and expects to also see an increase in “VLJs,” or very light jets, for small groups of business travelers.
A variety of aviation-related companies lease space at the airport: Federal Express operates a branch service; Glacier Helicopters offers a helicopter flight school; Sound Aircraft Repair specializes in restoring old planes; several businesses offer hangar rentals, and several others provide general aircraft maintenance. Whether you have aviation needs or not, Crosswinds Restaurant, located right next to the airfield, offers full-service dining seven days a week. All together, 20 businesses lease 11 acres of space at the airport from the Port. An additional 46 acres along the flight line are ready for development for additional aviation-related companies.

Bayview Business and Industrial Park (BBIP)
On about 110 acres surrounding the Skagit Regional Airport – just four miles west of I-5 – is the commercially-zoned Bayview Business and Industrial Park. BBIP might be considered the crown jewel in the Port of Skagit’s mission of economic development.
“We have everything from people who do landscaping, to contractors, to boat builders,” Heller said. “Diversity is important because some industries are cyclical.”
Parcels as large as 40 acres can be rented, he explained, and there is great flexibility as to possible lot sizes and configurations. The Port has already developed the complete infrastructure (roads, water, sewer, electricity and telephone lines) on an additional 200 acres within BBIP. These parcels are ready and available now for new business ventures.
During a recent tour, Heller pointed out a sampling of the varied businesses among the industrial park’s 43 current tenants:
• Hexcel Corporation – an international company headquartered in Connecticut that chose Skagit County as the place to prepare their patented honeycomb-shaped composite materials heavily used in the aerospace industry.
• Nordic Tugs, Inc. – builder of high-end pleasure craft designed to look like tug boats. In 1990, moved to Skagit from Woodinville when their growing business needed to expand.
• Golden Harvest, Inc – manufacturer of irrigation system equipment, largely used in Eastern Washington.
• Team Corporation – developer of high-precision test equipment.
• Garcia Enterprises, Inc. – start-up business that makes the absorbent pads placed on styrofoam trays used in packaging chicken meat.
• Lindal Building Products, Inc. – well-known manufacturer of cedar homes. The company uses its Burlington location to manufacture doors, windows and sunrooms.

Attracting new businesses
“We are very much in support of new industry in the county,” Heller stated. One of the ways of accomplishing this is by partnering closely with the Economic Development Association of Skagit County (EDASC). EDASC is a non-profit agency whose mission is “to enhance Skagit County’s quality of life through the creation and preservation of healthy businesses and good jobs.” Under the leadership of Executive Director Don Wick since 1987, EDASC has attracted a number of high-profile new tenants to the Port. As Heller put it, “Don (Wick) knows what’s available and where” and can invite perspective tenants to the Port’s ownership sites and show them desirable leasing opportunities.
As Wick, who used to be the general manager at KVBC Radio in Mount Vernon explained, “We (EDASC) are out there in the world to find companies that want to expand, especially in manufacturing, and bring them to Skagit County.” In Heller’s words, Wick does the marketing to bring news tenants in while the Port “provides the brick and mortar” to physically house them and help them expand and thrive over time.

Assisting small businesses
While it’s exciting to bring in big name, international companies like Hexcel, the Port is also committed to giving fledgling businesses a chance. Two programs are currently in place specifically to encourage new enterprises.
The “Start-Up Program” is designed for brand new businesses just starting out. They can rent space from the Port for greatly reduced rates while they are establishing themselves. They are given six years to fully develop. Garcia Enterprises is an example of a successful start-up now its second year of business at BBIP and recently named “Latino Business of the Year” for Skagit County.
Similarly, the “Incubator Program” is tailored for small, home-based businesses finally ready to move out of the garage or basement, but still needing a little more time to become successful. These companies sign a three-year least with the Port. The first year they pay only one-third the regular rent rate; the second year two-thirds the regular rate, and the third year they pay full rent. The purpose of the Incubator Program, Heller explained, “is to give businesses time to transition out of the garage and into the marketplace.”
Owners of start-up and incubator businesses at the Port are encouraged to work closely with EDASC for help with writing business plans, getting bank loans, marketing and other getting-started business skills. “We view helping businesses get started as an important part of our function,” Heller emphasized and pointed out how by being a public entity rather than a for-profit business, the Port can afford to support these up and coming businesses without worrying too much about the bottom line.

Planning ahead
Heller had been a practicing attorney in Woodland for more than 20 years before becoming the Port’s Executive Director in 1994. A significant part of his practice in Southwestern Washington had involved representing the Ports of Woodland and Kalama. Over time he became more and more versed in what ports do and the value they bring to communities. So by the time Heller moved to Skagit County to accept the job as Port Director, he had some exciting ideas on how to create a thriving and economically sustainable port.
One critical step was developing a comprehensive plan for future land development. The 1,800 Port-owned acres by the Skagit Regional Airport in Burlington contain considerable wetlands scattered throughout the property. Heller and others realized it would be smart to figure out ahead of time which areas could be developed and which could not. Accordingly, a technology committee was set up including members from all the appropriate resource agencies (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Department, Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife, Washington Department of Ecology, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Skagit County Planning Department and others).
A formal assessment was conducted to distinguish high- from low-functioning wetlands. It took years, but the committee eventually came up with a formal policy – the Skagit Wetlands Industrial Negotiation – signed in 2003 by all the resource agencies plus the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Port of Skagit. In 2003 the Corps granted the Port a 404 Wetlands Permit which spells out exactly which sites may be used for future business development. For prospective businesses, the advantage is enormous – all the environmental impact work has already been done and permitted.
As a result of the Skagit WIN planning agreement, 500 of the Port’s 1,800 acres have been set aside permanently for wetlands and buffer zones, never to be built upon. About 450 acres have been set aside for future growth under the Growth Management Act. And 20 acres were designated for environmental mitigation – where the Port has had to do restoration and enhancement work.

Giving back to the community
Skagit County’s planning code requires pedestrian access on publicly owned lands. Usually this means building curbs, sidewalks, and gutters. But within the BBIP there is a scattered patchwork of where businesses can and cannot be developed. Heller and the Port Commissioners realized it did not make much sense to build a series of disconnected segments of sidewalks and curbs in the industrial park itself. Rather they proposed a system of pedestrian pathways around the park as a valuable and aesthetic amenity to the community at large. Today there are more than 10 miles of beautiful walking and biking trails in Burlington built by the Port. Over time, as more of the available industrial parcels get developed, Heller explained, more public paths will correspondingly be built.
Both Heller and Wick are interested in continuing to bring into Skagit County those companies that will create good jobs, pay their employees well and provide a solid tax base for the county. As Heller sees it, their joint commitment is “to try to determine what sorts of industry will provide a good return to the community.”

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The LaConner Marina includes moorage slips for 500 boats and dry storage for 200 others.





The Skagit Regional Airport, which became past of the Port of Skagit in 1964, serves smaller, private jets.





Port of Skagit executive director Jerry Heller has attracted a wide variety of small business and start-up businesses to the Port.