Fisken made his election a referendum on the Port's future. He ran against the idea of the Port becoming a real-estate developer and sounded a back-to-basics theme. Organized labor helped overcome the tremendous fund-raising advantage that Nordquist had over the challenger.
While the principal focus of the Port's current real-estate efforts are the 57 acres of uplands at Interbay's Terminal 91 (see "Biotech Land Rush," Nov. 19, 2003), not so long ago the big plans centered on Terminal 46. In 2002, the Port launched a major push to redevelop Terminal 46, including an effort to get Hanjin to move elsewhere in the harbor. One year later, evidently after Hanjin refused to relocate, the Port changed course and began upgrading the terminal for industrial use.
All photography by Dan Lamon
Visionary developer Frank Stagen stands on the rooftop of his marquee property, the Starbucks Center, overlooking his next field of dreams—the industrial areas of SoDo. (Below) Stagen wants an 88-acre shipping terminal to become parks, offices, condos, and a new Sonics arena.
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Port Commission President Paige Miller says the lease with Hanjin requires the ongoing $70 million upgrade—$21 million went for the cranes, the rest is going to strengthen the terminal's apron, put in new tracks for the cranes to run on, and other improvements.
Fisken thinks it is sounder to invest in the container-shipping business than in real-estate dreams and schemes. He points out that only a limited number of ports on the West Coast can handle container traffic from Asia. Everyone agrees that the amount of shipping business will only increase as more and more goods are made in Asia for the U.S. market. Fisken notes that ports have a key advantage: both a monopoly and an antitrust exemption. "If the public ports were sold to private companies," he writes, "with the same opportunity to collude, ask yourself how many days it would be before those new managers would be gathering at some Northern California resort, chatting about lease terms and charges. The goal would not be to level the field—only to raise the floor so that no one is losing."
That's what Fisken proposes to do with the ports of Tacoma and Vancouver, B.C.—hammer out an agreement not to undercut one another on leases in the container- shipping business.
He and other observers of marine business and labor say that the Northwest will receive a greater share of the coming increase in container shipping because the California ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the super facilities of the West Coast, are nearing capacity. The only question in Fisken's mind is whether the Northwest ports will cut each other's throats. "Some West Coast ports do make money, some don't. But all of the container ports ought to," Fisken says.
"The 46 debate comes down to: Can you make money? If you can't do that, Nitze-Stagen is going to prevail."
Fisken thinks the entire region should be concerned with economic diversification. Right now, he points out, "software may be down, but containers are going back up. You need that leg of the stool." The city, he says, has sufficient capacity elsewhere for 75 years of housing and office development.
The Port commissioner, like Stagen, also sees an opportunity in the viaduct reconstruction. He wants the elevated highway to be moved a little to the east so that the railroad tracks would no longer be cut off from the waterfront near Terminal 46. That would create space for direct dock- to-rail shipping.
New Blood, Old News
Port Commission President Miller has heard all these arguments before. She recalls past commissioners, including Paul Schell, who later became mayor, trying to get Tacoma to stop undercutting Seattle's prices in the shipping business. "Alec and I have had some rather lively conversations about this topic," Miller says. "If this was a simple issue, it would have been resolved a long time ago. I sincerely doubt Alec's idea is going to be the solution." She says shipping business worldwide has increased steadily over her past 16 years on the commission, but Seattle and Tacoma have lost market share. She notes that congestion has been a problem in Los Angeles and Long Beach for at least a decade, and Seattle and Tacoma have not been the beneficiaries. She says the idea of moving the viaduct east to create opportunities for on-dock rail has been discarded as too expensive. "It's great to have new blood on the commission, but he's seeing things that are not new."
Miller says her first priority, as commission president, is to keep Hanjin in the Seattle harbor. That said, she acknowledges, "We don't know the long-term use out into the future for that facility" at Terminal 46.
Fisken admits that both the Port Commission and the Port's staff remain divided over the agency's future. He knows that developers like Stagen hope to use this weakness to their advantage. "I have to win this argument at the Port, then the Port has to win it in the Northwest," he says.
"So this is a modest little proposal," Fisken says in his deadpan way. "Make all the West Coast ports profitable; move Highway 99; sign new leases for lots of money; keep the jobs; keep the economic diversity." So he admits he wants the impossible? Not at all. "It's doable," he declares with a confident grin. "This is a key part of our economy and should remain so forever."
ghowland@seattleweekly.com
