Weyerhaeuser -- The House-Growing Company
Its roots are in forest products,
but the largest private holder
of land in the state is now
harvesting urban growth, too
A great blue heron pumps its wings and lifts off from a quiet marsh in the Nisqually River Delta. It climbs to a comfortable altitude and then calmly glides east, floating over wetlands, rookeries, mud flats and bulldozers.
Bulldozers?
The future has arrived with a vengeance at the historic area northeast of Olympia. Once the home of Puget Sound's first white settlement, it soon will hold 21,000 residents in two planned villages bracketing the delta.
Designed and financed by the Weyerhaeuser Co., the new communities will dramatically transform the area, just as other Weyerhaeuser projects are helping to change the face of the Puget Sound region.
Weyerhaeuser is the largest private landowner in the state with 1.57 million acres. In King County, it owns nearly a fifth of all the land, an area four times the size of Seattle. Its timber inventory out-stacks all competitors in the nation. It owns more softwood timber than any other private company in the world.
By virtue of this massive land inventory, its network of real-estate subsidiaries and its political clout, Weyerhaeuser has become a dominant force in the Puget Sound development boom. Where it once grew trees, it now builds houses:
-- In the south Puget Sound area, the Nisqually Delta developments will create bookend cities around the last unspoiled wildlife refuge between the Columbia and Skagit Rivers.
-- In eastern King County, Weyerhaeuser is planning two new communities for about 12,000 residents on the bluffs overlooking the Snoqualmie Valley, the county's last rural valley.
-- In suburban King and Snohomish counties, Weyerhaeuser has set a rapid development pace in the ``Technology Corridor'' of Interstate 405, where office towers are replacing farmlands.
-- In Seattle, its plans for an office complex in the Fremont neighborhood have ignited protests by residents who say the project is oversized and out of step with the artistic community.
Yes, Weyerhaeuser is still the tree-growing company - most of its land remains in timber - but it now grows houses, condos, apartments, shopping malls and office towers, too.
In the next five years, as the Puget Sound region grows by an estimated 300,000 people, the company will embrace those new residents with open arms. And it will be in an unrivaled position to guide growth, particularly toward Carnation and other towns nestled near vast tracts of Weyerhaeuser land in the Cascade foothills.
To company officials, such development is a natural extension of the logging operation Frederick Weyerhaeuser launched 90 years ago when he purchased 900,000 acres of raw Washington timberland.
In today's crisp real-estate market, they say, it doesn't make sense to grow trees in suburban areas when building houses is more profitable. And company officials contend that their developments are unsurpassed in quality, design and financing.
They point to West Campus, an elaborate planned community in Federal Way with 6,000 houses and apartments. It has won awards for its design and compatibility with the environment.
In light of that success, many environmentalists still consider Weyerhaeuser ``the best of the S.O.B.'s,'' a title that company chief George Weyerhaeuser earned years ago in the region's early environmental wars over logging.
But a solid reputation doesn't always soften the impact of this Fortune 100 company.
Some Puget Sound residents and environmentalists view Weyerhaeuser's aggressive push into real estate as both a threat and betrayal. They fear not only the loss of their rural lifestyles, but the loss of vast forest lands. Washington is, they note, the Evergreen state. And Weyerhaeuser is cutting down many of the trees that inspired that nickname.
``I think large timber owners have a special public trust,'' says John House, founder of Friends of Snoqualmie Valley. ``They are stewards of a major natural resource. It's kind of like owning Lake Washington: You would not have a right to pollute it at will.''
House argues that Weyerhaeuser has an obligation to sustain forest land as a natural resource. He views wholesale conversion as a betrayal of that obligation, particularly in light of the enormous tax breaks enjoyed by Weyerhaeuser and other timberland owners.
Weyerhaeuser pays less than $1 an acre per year on its forest land in King County - an incentive to keep the property in timber. Only when it's converted to other uses, such as development, is the land fully assessed at current value, and the company is charged for 10 years of back taxes at present rates.
That can be a big chunk of money, but the cost generally is passed along to the buyer.
With that in mind, House argues that Weyerhaeuser should not have unbridled say over the use of its land just because it was in a position to buy so much property nearly a century ago.
``Talking about Weyerhaeuser is like talking about the national debt,'' agrees Nisqually activist Janet Dawes. ``It's so big, there's no way to visualize it.''
How big is it?
In King County alone, Weyerhaeuser's timberland branches over 214,000 acres, most of it clumped along the Cascade foothills on the urban fringe.
The Weyerhaeuser Real Estate Co. manages another 3,300 acres of suburban land in King County and 16,245 acres statewide. It is among the nation's top 10 home builders and recorded close to $1 billion in sales in seven states last year.
Quadrant, the company's development arm, is the state's sixth-largest developer with a portfolio that includes 16 business developments, three apartment complexes and eight subdivisions. It plans to build another 1,000 homes and 1,500 apartments in the next five years, according to Quadrant President Jim Fitzgerald.
Those numbers don't include the large, phased-in communities for which Weyerhaeuser and its various partners have drawn up blueprints. Combined, they will create five new communities in the Puget Sound region, with homes for about 36,000 people.
They include:
-- Snoqualmie Ridge, a 2,000-home development with a golf course and business park on 1,400 acres near the city of Snoqualmie; about 5,000 residents.
-- Northridge, 3,200 homes and apartments with office and retail space, proposed for 1,500 acres on the west side of the Snoqualmie Valley on Novelty Hill; about 7,000 residents.
-- Beaver Dam, 1,300 homes and apartments, with a golf course, on 574 acres of the East Sammamish Plateau; about 2,600 people.
-- Meridian Campus, 2,800 housing units and commercial development on 1,150 acres in Thurston County just west of the Nisqually delta; about 7,200 residents.
-- Northwest Landing, 6,500 homes and apartments on 3,000 acres just east of the delta to accommodate 14,000 people over 40 years. It will include a business and industrial district with jobs for 17,000 people.
``They advertise themselves as the tree-growing company, but that's all camouflage,'' says veteran environmentalist Harvey Manning. ``They grow trees up until the time an accountant looks it over and says it's time for a development instead.''
Manning fears that trend will transform the region, particularly in the Cascade foothills where Weyerhaeuser forests stand like sentries between suburbs and mountainous slopes.
``I'm afraid Snoqualmie Ridge is only the beginning,'' says Manning. ``Weyerhaeuser will run the Puget Sound city right up to the foot of Mount Si.''
Company officials cringe at such talk.
``Let me give you a shocking figure,'' says Allen Garrett, timberland manager for the Cascade operation. ``In King County, the lands I manage comprise up to 18 percent. That obviously can affect a lot of things as far as the future is concerned. But we don't have some Machiavellian long-term scheme that X amount of land will be conveyed out of timberland and changed to other things.''
Garrett is a professional forester. He says he loves the woods and has no interest in sacrificing strands of mature douglas fir to a developer's bulldozer.
But he admits there comes a point at which logging is no longer feasible on some land. ``When the timberland ceases to be competitive, because of regulatory or environmental or political constraints, then we have to consider doing other things.''
And other things can mean development.
Each year over the past decade, Weyerhaeuser has removed between 1,000 and 1,500 acres from forestry near the urban fringe. Much of it has gone from the hands of loggers to the management of company lawyers, architects and realtors.
It's likely that the next batch of land to change hands within the company will be the forests in eastern King County.
Garrett says Weyerhaeuser has 1,500 acres immediately east of Carnation, a small town about 45 minutes from Seattle. ``And probably over time that will end up going for real-estate development in the next growth squirt. When will that be? I have no idea - two, five, 15 years. It depends on what happens to zoning, the market and community plans.''
Such talk confirms the fears of those who think Weyerhaeuser's real-estate division is muscling in on the company's timber operation.
``The real-estate tail is wagging the timber dog at Weyerhaeuser,'' says Dave Larson, vice president of the Washington Farm Forestry Association, which represents small, private tree farmers.
He points to a significant policy shift in 1988 when the company selected its new president, Jack Creighton, from the real-estate division instead of its timber ranks.
Larson also points out that Weyerhaeuser is not under pressure to sustain its forest lands in Washington because it has access to a staggering amount of timberland in Canada. The company has secured long-term licenses to harvest 9 million acres in the western provinces, almost double the amount of land it owns in the United States.
``If economic or regulatory restrictions, invasions of the gypsy moth or the eruption of volcanoes disrupt their business in one geographic area, Weyerhaeuser is well hitched in Canada,'' Larson says. ``It could take the pressure off the need to keep land here in timber.''
Garrett says hogwash.
``It absolutely does not take the pressure off our operations here,'' he says. ``They are two separate companies in two separate countries operating under different rules.''
Garrett says that Weyerhaeuser is fully committed to its Northwest timber operations. It is growing far more trees than houses, and logging-related activities strongly outpace real-estate action in profits.
Last year, Weyerhaeuser sales company-wide soared to $10 billion - one-tenth of which was generated by the real-estate division.
``Our objective is to maintain timberlands profitably for as long as possible,'' Garrett says. ``Hopefully to perpetuity.''
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THE NISQUALLY SQUEEZE
Two residential developments by Weyerhaeuser's real-estate division will surround the only unspoiled wildlife refuge between the Columbia and the Skagit.
Northwest Landing
3,000-acre commercial and residential development for 14,000 people.
Meridian Campus
1,150-acre commercial and residential development for 7,200 people.
The refuge
1. Fresh-water marshes attract migratory waterfowl in the spring and fall.
2. Salt marshes serve as resting and feeding habitat for birds.
3. Nisqually River and Mcallister Creek provide fresh water for fish spawning.
4. Mud flats support shrimp worms and crabs and provide food for birds.
5. Grassland is home to voles and other animals - food for hawks, owls and coyotes.
6. Woods are resting areas for red-tail hawks.
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WEYERHAEUSER DEVELOPMENTS AROUND PUGET SOUND
Planned communities
a Northridge
b Beaver Dam
c Snoqualmie Ridge
d West Campus
e Meridian Campus
f Northwest Landing
Residential
A Elliott Bay Plaza
B North Creek Heights
C Crofton
D Remington
E Chesnut Hills
F The Ridge
G Barclay Place
H Campus Estates
I Campus Highlands
Commercial
1 Quadrant Lake Union Center
2 Quadrant I-5 Center
3 Quadrant Monte Villa Center
4 Quadrant Business Park-Bothell
5 Quadrant Parkside Center
6 Quadrant Corporate Center
7 Quadrant Tech Center
8 Quadrant Willows Center
9 Willows Business Center
10 Quad 95 at Willows
11 Cascade Plaza
12 Quadrant Plaza
13 Auburn Park of Industry
14 Lund Industrial Park
15 Auburn 400 Corp. Park
16 Weyerhaeuser Real Estate Bldg.