Kvichak can’t find workers here

By Steve Clark

Concerns about viaduct construction impacts and housing costs are forcing one Ballard business to look beyond Seattle to find labor for a $600 million U.S. Coast Guard boat-building contract.

“I don’t have a great deal of confidence that we’ll find people we need willing to commute into Seattle. I’m taking the jobs where the people are,” said Brian Thomas, one of the owners of Kvichak Marine, a company located on the Lake Washington Ship Canal that builds aluminum-hulled workboats. Kvichak’s recent contract award with the Coast Guard means the company will have to hire roughly 100 skilled workers to build approximately 200 of the 45-foot long specialized boats over the next 10 years.

Thomas said that though the company will maintain its current presence in Ballard, the combination of fears about the logistical morass that might come from replacing the downtown segment of the State Route 99 corridor, along with the rising cost of real estate, meant the risk of trying to attract workers to Ballard for new business was too great, requiring the company to open a new plant elsewhere.

“The harsh realities are that I’ve got to double my workforce in three years. The commute is only going to get worse and the only people who can afford houses here are the people that already own houses,” Thomas said

How much of the Ballard economy will be jeopardized by construction of the viaduct replacement was a main topic of conversation at the Economic Development and Neighborhoods Committee meeting in Ballard last Thursday night.

“That’s a real loss for us. Those are good jobs,” said City Councilwoman Sally Clark, who chairs the committee, speaking about the Kvichak decision.

Clark, who supports a tunnel to replace the viaduct, said the Washington State Department of Transportation needed to do a better job of investigating the possible impacts to the economic health of Ballard during the viaduct construction.

“It’s really a two part question. What do you do if you can’t use the viaduct, and what do you do if the solution is a tunnel? I haven’t heard really convincing answers to either of those questions,” she said.

John Kane, the chairman of the Ballard Interbay Northend Manufacturing Industrial Center, which represents a large number of industrial businesses in Ballard, said there were a number of challenges but the fate of the viaduct and the businesses that use it tended to loom over everything else.

“There’s no doubt that the big issue … is transportation,” Kane said, including that the city needed to put more resources into the city’s freight mobility program, which he said was understaffed. “Ron Borowski [the city Department of Transportation freight mobility coordinator] does everything he can but he’s only one guy.”

Kane also said more potential projects, even those not on the scale of the viaduct, needed to be vetted by freight mobility review, and that the city and the Port of Seattle need to do a better job of marketing the maritime and industrial sectors of Seattle. He mentioned specifically the Port of Seattle Commission letter of September 12, to Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, urging the mayor to support a zoning change near Terminal 91 in Interbay, allowing for commercial uses instead of strictly industrial ones. Kane said the port should be marketing that area instead of dreaming up new uses for it.

“Things that can increase the fabric of the maritime sector n that’s a shot in the arm. It shows that the city and the port are really serious about industry. And it changes people’s attitudes,” he said.

Despite the challenges, Kane said that industrial Ballard was healthy and Council Member Clark believed it would endure despite the pressure from rising land values and viaduct questions.

“I think in fifty years you’re still going to have fishing fleets and companies that ship cargo up to Alaska by barge. But it doesn’t happen without us being there to nurture it,” Clark said.

Kvichak’s Thomas was optimistic with reservations:

“I’m a big supporter of maritime and it’s got a good future. But there are things the city doesn’t have a whole lot of control over like housing costs and commute times. And when I look at the mayor’s preference for [replacing] the viaduct, I shudder. I think that’s going to be a real challenge for everybody.”