Centralia is poised to welcome a series of proposed warehouses at Centralia port properties after a nearly year-long moratorium, but limits on warehouses in other parts of the city are likely to remain.
The Centralia City Council on Tuesday evening voted five to two in favor of moving forward with a proposal from the Port of Centralia to end the moratorium during a special meeting to address the issue.
Councilors Jan Nontell and Ray Chapman-Wilson voted against the motion.
Councilors in support of the move said they felt the moratorium had run its course and that the major concerns with development — jobs and traffic — had been addressed during the pause in development.
“The original intent of the moratorium was to stop and take a look, and I think that we have done that,” Councilor Kevin Curtis said. “We've done our due diligence.”
A final deal will likely open up only Port of Centralia Park One, which includes land west of Harrison Avenue, east of the Chehalis River and north of Galvin Road, for large warehouse development by Logistics Property Company, LLC (LPC). The full moratorium is expected to stay in place, or even be extended, until negotiations with the port, the county and the LPC are finalized.
The council did not actually take any official policy action to lift the moratorium.
Rather, the council agreed to move forward with negotiations with the Port of Centralia based on its proposal to end the moratorium. City staff will now move forward with negotiating an interlocal agreement with the port and LPC for the proposed development of Port of Centralia Park One.
The council added specific direction to staff to also incorporate previously discussed development terms with LPC in the negotiations.
“I'm wanting to make sure that our intent as a council is communicated very clearly,” Deputy Mayor Kelly Smith Johnston said, “so that city staff can take that intent and ensure it's represented in those conversations that would happen at a later date.”
The final vote came nearly two and a half hours after the special meeting began, with the warehouse moratorium and the port proposal as the only business topic of the evening.
Centralia City Manager Micahel Thomas kicked off the meeting by presenting the council with five city staff recommendations for steps forward with the moratorium. The five options included everything from immediately lifting the moratorium with no regulations in place to continuing the moratorium and codifying a restriction on any buildings larger than 250,000 square feet.
None of the city councilors expressed a desire to outright lift the moratorium without further negotiations and agreements.
However, the two nay votes on the final motion shared their support for options that would see the warehouse moratorium codified into law, with Chapman-Wilson emphasizing that a square footage limit could always be undone or adapted in the future if the warehouses already underway work out well.
“We would have a process to increase square footage in the future,” Chapman-Wilson said. “Let's say building one works out fantastically; it's the best thing we've ever seen, and it really works well for jobs and everything else. We could increase square footage.”
The approval to move forward with the Port of Centralia proposal, which was released roughly a month ago, comes after significant discussion and consideration. The city council originally voted against a motion to move forward with the proposal in a meeting shortly after it was released last month. In that meeting, Chapman-Wilson, along with councilors Tucker Voetberg and Curtis, voted in favor of the proposal while the rest voted against it.
The group in favor was significantly different Tuesday, with Smith Johsnton as well as Mayor Chris Brewer and Councilor Adriana Garibay changing their votes from last time to support the proposal. Chapman-Wilson was the only councilor to move from a vote in favor last month to a vote against this month.
During council discussion, which lasted more than an hour, councilors explained their various approaches and changes of opinion. Brewer and Smith Johnston specifically explained the change in their stance, pointing to years of public planning to zone the port area and surrounding land for industrial use, planned traffic mitigation and a slower than originally planned timeline for development to allow local infrastructure upgrades.
Smith Johnston specifically referred to the moratorium as “a good idea” and “highly effective” in line with the city's originally stated objective for the moratorium to pause development to allow for the city to take a closer look at the impacts.
“I think that we are in a much better position now than we were a year ago,” Smith Johnston said. “Through that process, we have studied extensively. We have done a lot of outreach. We've used that time effectively.”
She added that some changes have already been made. The city now has full control of State Environmental Protection Act (SEPA) processes in its urban growth area, allowing it to decide how to measure environmental and traffic impacts. The city has also started a transition to a new fee structure to fund traffic improvements, and the port has proposed significant community investment.
Brewer stressed the traffic mitigation work already underway at the city, such as adaptive traffic signal timing, and also floated a warehouse square footage tax for future consideration to fund development and mitigation.
Discussion also briefly moved to concerns over new warehouses being converted into detention facilities for use by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which was addressed by a written pledge from the port and LPC not to allow a detention facility conversion.
Ten individuals testified in person during the meeting and another four offered testimony over Zoom. Testimony was relatively split, with a slight majority voicing opposition to further warehouse development and citing ethical, environmental and lifestyle concerns.
Both members of the Port of Centralia Commission, Ally Pickard and Peter Lahmann, also attended the meeting along with Port Executive Director Amy Graber. The port offered a statement Wednesday morning praising the move by the city council as evidence of the “strong partnership that has been rebuilt between the Port, the City and Lewis County.”
“The Council’s vote affirms a shared commitment to responsible growth, job creation and long-term investment in our community,” reads the statement.
