June 7, 2004

There's a new energy at Satsop

Photo by Marc Stiles Tami Garrow and Joel Rett of the Satsop Development Park stand inside one of the cooling towers. A public development authority is turning the unfinished nuclear power plants at Satsop into a business and technology park.

SATSOP -- What some people think is just a hop, skip and a jump, others consider a long journey.

Consider the distance between Olympia and Satsop Development Park, just outside Elma.

To many Elma residents, Olympia is a mere 30 miles to the east.

To commercial real estate brokers in Seattle, that 30 miles might as well be 300.

It's Tami Garrow's job to bridge the gap between these perspectives. If she succeeds, she could help turn Satsop into a thriving business and technology center.

Garrow, chief executive officer of the public development authority that operates the business park, is using various strategies to tell the Satsop story. One, she says, is embracing what's unique about the place.

Satsop, home of two unfinished nuclear reactors, is plenty unusual. The twin cooling towers, which reach skyward 497 feet, are visible for miles.

Less noticeable is a curved roof that was supposed to crown one reactor building. It was left near the base of one cooling tower years ago. These days it's locally known as the "Thunder Dome" because the Thunder, a girls' softball team, practices inside.

There is more to Satsop than oddities. The sprawling park has massive amounts of infrastructure, including electrical transmission lines and two substations that can provide "more juice than you could possibly know what to do with," Garrow says.

'Tech workers are much more interested in quality of life versus working where the tallest buildings are.' -- Rich Miller, SafeHarbor

Three telecommunication lines connect the outside world to Satsop, which is along a verdant ridge just off state Route 8, a wide-open freeway that's a straight shot to the state capital and Interstate 5.

Garrow cites these and other attributes with the zeal of an economic developer, which she is. But for her, it's personal. She grew up in heavily timbered Grays Harbor County in the 1970s and saw the decline of her hometown, Hoquiam, and nearby Aberdeen, which withered along with the wood-products industry.

Satsop's economic development dreams were dashed in 1983 when the Washington Public Power Supply System pulled the plug on building two reactors there. Garrow says up to 5,000 people worked at Satsop in the late 1970s, building reactors that were officially mothballed in 1995.

"This little project,” Garrow says of the business park, “was kind of born of that termination.”

Some people saw only an abandoned, 440-acre construction site on 1,700 acres, but county officials formed the Grays Harbor Public Development Authority to see what they could do with it. Five years ago, title to the land was transferred to the PDA along with $15 million in seed capital.

The money was spent on water, sewer and telecom systems. Another $2.5 million came from the feds for new roads.

"I'm just amazed at what we've been able to accomplish," says Garrow.

Today, about 400 people work for a dozen companies at Satsop. Boise (formerly Boise Cascade) built a 260,000-square-foot plant that's gearing up to manufacture siding out of recycled plastic and wood. SafeHarbor Technology, which provides online customer support to clients such as Washington Mutual and American Airlines, employs almost 200 people.

The business park has a long way to go, but it ultimately could be home to 5,000 employees, according to Garrow, whose 15-member staff is working with consultants to make that vision a reality. The authority has hired AHBL of Tacoma to finish the park master plan.

One big garage sale

The PDA is getting various properties ready for lease or sale, which leads to Satsop's next big project: the largest garage sale in Washington state history.

In the past, the PDA sold surplus pumps, motors, valves and the like to nuclear power plants. But board members decided to get out of the spare parts business and now are selling it all: lock, stock and reactor. The original value of the equipment exceeds $200 million, according to Joel Rett, a project manager at Satsop.

After the winning bidder moves everything out, the authority will have 360,000 square feet of leasable space in the very stout turbine and auxiliary reactor buildings. The property comes with three cranes, each with a lifting capacity of 250 tons.

Satsop officials also have warehouse, office and tech space available for lease and sale today.

One of the most intriguing spaces is a 43,000-square-foot facility that comes with biometric palm scanners. A British company, QinetiQ (pronounced kinetic), which guards information for clients, leased the building for 10 years and made $750,000 worth of improvements.

The company's timing, however, was unfortunate. It entered the U.S. market just after Sept. 11, 2001. When the global economy tanked in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, QinetiQ gave the Satsop space back. Earlier this year, the company and PDA negotiated a $3.36 million lease-termination settlement.

With so much space, the PDA must be aggressive, say Seattle-area brokers.

Rob Aigner, who heads the Puget Sound offices of Colliers International, shakes his head when the subject of Satsop comes up. How far off I-5 is it? Thirty miles? That's a long way, he says.

The competition's stiff. "There are a lot of good choices along Interstate 5," adds Chris Corr, an industrial broker at GVA Kidder Mathews' Tukwila office. He thinks Satsop is too far from the interstate for a distribution center. Manufacturing might work, but he wonders where employees would live.

As for high-tech, Corr says, forget about it. "I just don't think the demographics down there warrant high-tech." He adds that to get any type of tenant, Satsop is "going to have to throw a lot of incentives at someone."

Traffic's a breeze

Garrow counters those comments by saying, "We are not that far away."

Officials of Boise, which hauls in recyclables to make siding, didn't think so either. In fact, it was Satsop's location, with easy access from I-5, that led Boise there, according to company spokesman Doug Bartels.

Plentiful water was another draw. The company pipes it in from the cooling tower.

SafeHarbor has no trouble recruiting techies to Grays Harbor County, according to Rich Miller, director of service delivery operations for the company. "Tech workers are much more interested in quality of life versus working where the tallest buildings are."

Other pluses for SafeHarbor were a ready work force and a lack of traffic congestion. Fishing and logging industries employed some of the same people for years, according to Miller. "We thought we could take advantage of that in building a strong, loyal work force and we have."

And traffic? "We joke the only traffic problem we have out here are speeding tickets," Miller says. "Up there (Seattle) other cars slow you down. Here it's the State Patrol."

Garrow and her staff continue plugging away on the marketing front. Satsop officials plan to take their story on the road with an open house this fall in Seattle. Their target is companies that would be affected by replacement of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, a project which could last as long as 11 years.

"If indeed they have to relocate their businesses, we would like them to think about Satsop," says Garrow, who adds she is willing to make deals. In Satsop, she says, "we have the ability to be ridiculously competitive."