Preservation sought for historic building

| PHILIP A. DWYER THE BELLINGHAM HERALD

• PRESERVING HISTORY
  
  People interested in preserving historic waterfront buildings can contact Becky Hutchins at artandartifact@yahoo.com, or see www.historicbellingham.org.
  Port of Bellingham staff and consultants will present a new waterfront development proposal to port commissioners at 9 a.m. Tuesday at the Harbor Center Conference Building, 1801 Roeder Ave.
  The port proposal will be presented to the Waterfront Advisory Group at 6 p.m. Wednesday, same location.
  
  

The Port of Bellingham and city of Bellingham are crafting plans for the mill site, which the port acquired from G-P three years ago. A port consultant’s report released in May includes a map of the site with this note: “Potential Demo of Pier & Grainery Bldg.”

Becky Hutchins, a Lettered Streets resident, fears that early support for the idea of protecting historic waterfront buildings is waning amid the tangle of other development, transportation and environmental issues.

“I think that part of the conversation has gone away,” she said. “We want to be sure that all of the options are considered.”

To rally support, the ad-hoc group has begun a Web site, www.historicbellingham.org. Hutchins said old granaries refurbished elsewhere have become popular community attractions and aesthetic links to the past.

“We have a responsibility to maintain these structures that help illustrate our history,” she said. “We’d be very shortsighted to think of historic buildings as a liability instead of an asset.”

Carolyn Casey, port spokeswoman, said a possible route for a new road could put the granary in jeopardy, but stressed that no final decisions have been made and said several steps and more public comment are required before a final plan is adopted.

Bellingham Mayor Dan Pike noted that the city’s development plans for Old Town include protecting views of the granary.

“It’s a cool old building,” he said. “There are possibilities of saving it; whether it pencils out at the end of the day, I don’t know.’”

The main, three-story concrete granary has a basement and a five-story wooden silo tower.

According to a survey of G-P buildings done for the port four years ago, the granary was in “relatively good condition.” The survey said the granary’s edgeof- downtown location and its open warehouse spaces made it a “likely candidate” for early redevelopment, possibly for shops, offices and housing.

According to a preliminary estimate in the survey, the granary could be remodeled for about $7.5 million, nearly $202 a square foot.

Whatcom County became a henhouse powerhouse in the early 1900s. In 1915, local farmers formed an association, selling their eggs under the Kulshan brand name. By 1920, the county’s chicken population was near the top of the roost, exceeding every other county in the West except one in California.

In time, the local association evolved into the Washington Cooperative Egg and Poultry Association, with a new waterfront granary to collect, feed, process and ship chickens and eggs.

But after World War II, the number of local poultry farmers and hatcheries waned. The egg and poultry cooperative became Western Farmers Association and moved to Meridian Street in the early ’60s, leaving the granary vacant for several years.

John Blethen, a member of the Waterfront Advisory Group, questions whether it’s necessary to demolish the granary to build an access road to the mill site. He thinks a new road farther east might work.

“I would like to see that building looked at carefully,” Blethen said. “My gut feeling is that the building is savable.”

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