Marina Redevelopment: Community Meeting September 27, 2022

September 27, 2022 5:00PM – 7:00PM

Des Moines Activity Center – 2045 S. 216th St. Des Moines, WA 98198

Much has been accomplished over the last 4 years as we have worked together to move forward with redevelopment of the Marina. The City’s consultant, Skylab’s, have done a stellar job at capturing community input and feedback on redevelopment of the Marina, from our charrette in 2017 on the Argosy Boat, to our visioning meeting at the Yacht Club in 2019, and in numerous presentations and discussions with the City Council. On September 27, 2022, the City will host a community meeting to provide an update on the Marina Steps and associated development.

The meeting will held from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. at the Senior Activity Center located at 2045 S. 216th street.

Hope to see you there!

Background

1. This project is the most consequential City project since the Marina itself. It is also by far the most expensive. (It will cost at least $50,000,000 of your money–more than the original Marina in fact.) It will literally transform not just the Marina, but the entire City of Des Moines. Permanently.
2. The entire premise of the Marina Redevelopment is that it will benefit the entire city long term. It’s purpose is to attract “tens of thousands of visitors to spend money.” And by doing so, we all win. The downtown wins. We sell more stuff, make more money, and then every resident benefits.

Some history

“The Marina Redevelopment” is actually several projects that are talked about together but are really separate items. For example, there are all the cranes working to replace the North Seawall. But that is maintenance, not ‘development’. This article is about items that are meant to bring in tourism and economic development.

This discussion begins with the Quarterdeck, which started in 2017 as a small container and has now expanded into a much larger facility. SR3 was next. Now the Ferry Pilot. The 223rd Stairs and the Adapative Purpose Building will come along in a couple of years. Then there are ideas about selling a portion of the Marina floor to build a boutique hotel. And then a drystack system–a storage system for small boats. Those were/are all meant to bring business to the City.

In the mean time, we are also spending $1,000,000 on new bathrooms plus almost $3,000,000 to replace the boat launch due to its recent failure.

But…. the real project is replacing all the docks, which are worn out. And the cost of all that will be at least $50,000,000. The payments just for the docks will be spread out to about $2,000,000 – $3,000,000 a year for 15-20 years.

Let that sink in for a minute.

So apart from all the fun stuff, the whole point is for “the land side to pay for the waterside.” Which means that the entire project is supposed to be self-funded. ie. no new taxes for you, no borrowing from the State. All sales and business.

And one last detail: our City keeps keep four cents from every dollar you spend on sales tax. So if we depend on sales tax for funding any of these projects, every dollar we spend requires twenty five dollars in sales, just to break even.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Some real numbers…

Currently, the Ferry is bringing in $10,000 a week. But it’s actual cost is at least triple that. Which means we’re probably losing $80,000 a month. Or more. It does not make money. It can never make money.

The Quarterdeck has always been leased for $300 a month. SR3 is also heavily subsidised and generates no revenue. The Farmers Market does not make significant money. Similarly, a small hotel, could not possibly bring in nearly enough money to cover all those costs.

Again, with a four percent sales tax, it takes $1,000,000 in sales to generate a whopping $40,000 in City sales tax.

There is simply no amount of local business we can hope to generate which would be adequate to fund the dock replacement.

Dry Stack

The only project on this list which is guaranteed to generate a lot of revenue for the City is a dry stack system. Here is an example of the Tacoma system.

That is what the Adaptive Purpose Building would most likely be used for: boat storage. So you’ll have boats moving in and out of that storage every day via fork lift, crossing the pedestrian path, to get to the boat launcher.

What about parking?

And then there is also one other not-much-fun item that could generate revenue and that’s a whole other discussion: parking. Because the fact is, none of this discusses parking. If you simply wanted to make money, you’d build a parking system on the Marina floor. That would definitely pay for the docks. But it would look ugly and leave no room for anything else. But… where will people park?

Loss Leader?

Now, you could look at these projects as “loss leaders”. We provide them at a loss in order to make a profit somewhere else. That was how the FAA building was sold–it doesn’t make money, but somehow it would drive business to the downtown. Obviously, that did not happen.  So my question is this, why are we following the same strategy that did not work?

If you say that the Ferry or the Quarterdeck or SR3 or any of that other stuff would ‘trickle down’ to help the entire business community? Great. By how much? Where are the studies to back that up?

There are none.

I’ve been sailing at this Marina for over 25 years. And no one wants the Marina to succeed more than me. But I’m pretty sure that most of you, down deep, already get that none of this makes any financial sense.

Public Outreach

Given that this started in 2017, there’s been almost none. In every other city in Puget Sound, there would have been half a dozen properly advertised town hall meetings to discuss a plan of this magnitude. The last  meeting was in 2017 (the City rented an Argosy ferry and asked residents to place ‘stickers’ on a board. Not a lot of depth, right?) There was also one very small event in 2019 which was poorly attended. I doubt the total number of people at both events was over 400. Last year, the City asked for questions about the project from… the boat owners; not the community at large! And now, after almost five years, the only promotion for this event is a note on the City web site and this bland quarter page note in the City Currents. (Contrast that to all the full colour ads encouraging people to “Ride The Boat!”)

Is this what you really want?

There a fundamental question here that has never been addressed: Do you really want the City to be transformed in all the ways such an increase in traffic would require?

To generate $2,000,000 more in annual revenue would require several times more visitors, every day of the week, than we have ever experienced. That’s a whole lotta ‘Destination’ for a town that went banana pants six years ago over a few hundred ‘Pokemon Go’ kids.

Since we have no parking to speak of, residents should consider what more foot (and auto) traffic would mean for the entire Marina District.

Summary

• The City has plowed ahead without having a genuine discussion about what the plan is or what it will mean for your quality of life and the City’s future. We all want more restaurants and fun things to do. But this plan isn’t about you, it’s supposedly about bringing tons of people here to spend money.
• It’s also complete money loser which robs essential money from programs that never have adequate funding like police, parks, human services, road repairs and doing something meaningful about the airport impacts.

I ask you to consider the true cost of all this. What it will mean if it succeeded, what it means if it does not, and what other city services will suffer just to give it a try.

For that reason alone, I urge you to show up Tuesday September 27th. Demand the same promotional effort at public engagement that the has thrown into selling tickets. Ask tough questions. And the one thing I would ask you to demand is this:

Another meeting.

One that is properly promoted and spells out the plan, including costs, timelines, revenue forecasts, traffic impacts and on and on…

We should not make this kind of long term decision without first establishing a commitment to much better public engagement.

PS: there are alternatives

The City has presented this as not just the best but the only alternative. That is simply not true. We can grow the downtown business core, the Marina and the City in a far more sensible, less disruptive, and organic way. Other cities do. We have actually done it before. In fact, we’ve been doing it since the last economic recovery. But not fast enough.

Businesses do not need money losing gimmicks to thrive here. We already have everything we need. We just need to recruit businesses with innovative products and the provide them with smart marketing help from an Economic Development program that provides ongoing support. That is what other cities are doing and for a supposedly conservative city, it’s interesting to me that we have not looked more carefully at how others have succeeded rather than trying something no one else has.