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With the help of funding by the Washington state Department of Commerce’s Industrial Readiness Grant, the Port of Chehalis invested in a feasibility study to explore possibilities for its 34-acre Bishop Road industrial site.
The port teamed up with Gibbs & Olson, a civil engineering firm, to come up with a concept for 28 usable acres of port-owned land within the City of Chehalis’ urban growth area. The remaining 6 acres are not developable due to wetlands and archeological impacts to the site, located east of Interstate 5 between Bishop Road and Jackson Highway. The overall property consists of five existing parcels, and the existing ground is covered with grass, shrubs and other vegetation.
Carol Ruiz, principal project manager at Gibbs & Olson, presented during Thursday’s port meeting a narrative and 15% preliminary opinion of cost for the site improvements needed for potential development. No official plans are in place, however, as port commissioners have not taken any action to determine the future of the land. The presentation was intended to examine the impacts that would need to be addressed if development were to occur, such as parking and stormwater, to send to funding agencies at a later time if the port decides to pursue development.
Ruiz provided an estimated layout using an industrial warehouse facility as its starting point, as she said it was the most appropriate for the site. Site improvements were designed for a general manufacturing facility of 190,125 square feet, but Ruiz said she realized it would be too large of a building to fit all of the parking and pavement requirements to be able to then treat and detain stormwater.
“In the end, the stormwater starts to drive how big of a site that you can get. The building will drive the parking, and the parking is going to drive your stormwater,” Ruiz told the port.
Access to the site is shown to be provided by two driveway entrances off Bishop Road and constructing a main access road that loops through the site, according to documents provided to the port from Gibbs & Olson. In addition, an emergency access road is shown off Jackson Highway. Potential site improvements would include lighting, water, sanitary sewer, storm drainage, and other utilities such as power, telephone, and cable and internet services.
A significant potential impact is the need to fill on the property for future development because of the site’s gentle slope from north to south. Ruiz said the Gibbs & Olson team focused on a conservative approach for necessary fill. For their concept, in order for trucks to get to the facility, they raised the building so trucks are level, which would require 8 to 10 feet of fill to raise it up, she said. A total of 58 truck spaces were shown with a loading dock provided along the back edge of the building in the layout provided to the port.
“One of the drivers that we chose to do, because it’s more conservative at this point, is to say, ‘If I have this industrial facility and I have trucks that need to get to the facility, you want to bring the trucks in at grade so that the building is raised up,’” Ruiz said. “So if I’ve got a 4-foot truck, the truck doesn’t have to go down a ramp. It just comes up at a nice level slope, and the building entrance or the floor of the building is 4 feet higher.”
Ruiz explained that the biggest limited factor for the project is stormwater, noting that stormwater is “the biggest challenge to try to make sites work.” The stormwater approach is to treat and detain the stormwater runoff from proposed frontage improvements along Bishop Road, as well as the fully developed site. The stormwater would be treated with multiple bioretention facilities and detained on site with three detention ponds. Two detention ponds are located on the southern portion of the property.
Due to elevation constraints of the existing drainage discharge locations, excavation for treatment and detention facilities was not feasible. Because of these elevation constraints, installation of an underground drainage collection and conveyance system would require pumping to discharge to treatment and detention facilities. Therefore, to provide conveyance of site runoff to the treatment and detention facilities, filling the site is needed to meet stormwater requirements.
“I don’t think the port wants to look at pumping to be able to discharge. Gravity discharge is the best option to make that work. The site has to be able to be raised because you want everything to be able to sheet flow,” Ruiz said.
Ruiz advised that there is a water line that runs across the site that would have to be realigned and there is no sewer directly in front of the site on Bishop Road, therefore, sewer would need to be extended along Bishop Road to the site from sewer availability on Rush Road.
Additionally, Ruiz recommended a phased approach for potential development of the site. She said the first step would be to clear and grub the site to take off the organics if development were to occur. Through her experience across different industrial development projects, one mistake that she said haunts property buyers or owners is not taking off the organic layer that’s on the surface before filling.
“A lot of people just want to come in and fill on top of the site, but the problem with that is you develop a layer of organics that’s in between native and fill that organic will break down over time,” Ruiz said. “Almost every single geotech will tell you you’re going to need to mitigate that if you want to put a building on top of that.”
The ultimate total projected cost for a potential industrial facility concept on the property was $35.5 million, according to Gibbs & Olson’s 15% opinion of cost provided to the port. Although Ruiz said projections could change depending on the specific user, similar projects she has worked on were close to that total.
“The cost that we ended up with here, I think, is within the ballpark. If I had come up with something that was half this cost, then I would say, ‘Alright, there’s something maybe a little bit off here,’” Ruiz said.
The most significant expenses listed on the opinion of cost are nearly $9 million for the amount of fill on the site, $3 million to $4 million for the bioretention facility and detention ponds, and $2 million for paving.
Lindsey Senter, Port of Chehalis chief executive officer, thanked Ruiz and the Gibbs & Olson team for bringing the concept to the table to complete the grant from the Department of Commerce. She said the concept may not return for some time, but it gives the port the opportunity to sit down with funding agencies in the future.
“We’re not always going to be able to have the resources to fight for big dollars, but it is at least known, I think, in the commerce realm that the Port of Chehalis can find a way to get the project done and created and move forward,” Senter said. “I’m excited to have this on hand because it does further our ability to take on whatever funding opportunities that come through, not that I foresee a lot of grants coming out anytime soon. This is going to exist for a while and will probably be here for a little bit.”
