BREMERTON: The Port of Bremerton will pay a Seattle company up to $75,000 to develop a targeted strategy for marketing the agency’s underutilized industrial properties. Port commissioners voted 2-1 Tuesday evening to approve a contract with real estate consulting firm Heartland LLC, with Larry Stokes casting the “no” vote.
The port landed a $49,500 grant from the state Department of Commerce to help cover the cost. Port CEO Jim Rothlin said the study will identify specific amenities offered by the industrial park and generate a list of companies that need those amenities. That information should help the port recruit new tenants and create jobs, he said. “When you’re trying to market to everyone, things get washed out,” Rothlin said. “Instead of marketing to everyone we’re focusing exactly what we have, and finding companies that need those exact things.”
Buildings in the port’s Olympic View Industrial Park north of Bremerton National Airport are almost entirely full. But the port also owns 11 “pad ready” building sites, and hundreds of acres of undeveloped land within Puget Sound Industrial Center-Bremerton (formerly SKIA). Commissioners Cary Bozeman and Axel Strakeljahn supported the study.
“It’s a fact we need to be more assertive and more aggressive to bring in more businesses and create a more business-friendly environment,” Strakeljahn said. Stokes said the cost of the study was expensive and pointed out Heartland had never completed a study of this kind.
“I can’t see how we can sit here and pay this kind of money to hire a company that has never done a project like this before,” Stokes said. Bozeman countered that Heartland has a stellar reputation and has worked on similar studies. “I have no doubt they can do this job,” Bozeman said.
Heartland has consulted on a number of high profile Seattle-area projects, including Seattle Housing Authority’s Yesler Terrace, South Lake Union redevelopment and the Issaquah Terrace master planned community, according to the company’s website. Also Tuesday the port commission approved an $89,000 contract to reroof the Airport Diner building.
