'Dry' marina open after 28 years of legal hurdles
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MOUNT VERNON — When the Seattle Boat Show opens in January, the Twin Bridges Marina, built along the Swinomish Slough just west of here, will have a booth open, looking for customers.
It's taken 28 years, as well as 14 lawsuits and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.
The marina has been a familiar sight recently for thousands of drivers heading for the Anacortes ferry. The building along Highway 20 resembles a gray, New England-colonial-style aircraft hangar with paned windows.
The idea for the marina dates to 1974, when Ken Youngsman bought 20 acres of agricultural land along the slough with the intention of building a new kind of marina, one where boats would be stacked in a building on shore instead of docked in the water.
What followed is what his nephew, Bill Youngsman, who's taken over the project, says is a waste of decades and uncountable amounts of money by both public agencies and private business wading through a tangle of permits, lawsuits and appeals.
Youngsman estimates Twin Bridges went through 14 lawsuits in state and federal courts and innumerable hearings and appeals.
Twin Bridges won all the cases, except for an appeal of $59,000 in fines scheduled to be heard by the state Shorelines Hearings Board on May 28.
No one has ever totaled the costs. Youngsman says the legal costs for Twin Bridges alone in a case that was settled in February came to more than $200,000, and he figures the costs to the public agencies would have been similar. In one 1986 federal case, for example, the Army Corps of Engineers was ordered to pay about $90,000 in court costs.
Dry-stack storage
All the fighting has been over a way to moor boats.
The idea is known as dry-stack storage. Instead of putting hundreds of boats in waterfront marinas, where they would take up thousands of feet of shoreline, they're stacked along the shore.
All that's needed is a few feet for a launching ramp. The stacks can be hundreds of feet from the water.
Small dry-stack marinas have been built in the Puget Sound area for more than 30 years and can be seen on north Lake Union or along the Edmonds waterfront.
The Twin Bridges idea was to take the concept one step further, building the state's first indoor, heated, dry-stack operation.
That is, in fact, what has happened. The $6 million marina opened in June.
But not without a long fight. Youngsman recalls that he was just 10 when he started driving past the site with his uncle.
Now he's prepared a summary of the project's history, going through such events as his uncle's original purchase in 1974, a 1975 rezone for industrial use, preparation of a 1975 Environmental Impact Statement, the 1976 issuance of a shoreline/conditional-use permit, a 1985 injunction sought by the Army Corps of Engineers that was overturned in federal court in 1986 and the issuing of another shorelines/conditional use permit that year.
By 1987, Skagit County was challenging one of the shorelines permits before a hearing examiner. By 1996 and 1997, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Corps of Engineers and the state Department of Ecology had become involved in reviewing the work. By last year, a State Environmental Policy Act review was being done and the city of Anacortes intervened.
In April 2000, with revised building permits issued by Skagit County, construction started, but in June a new hearing examiner ruled the permits were issued improperly. Twin Bridges appealed the decision, and more court actions followed.
Last February, Skagit County, Anacortes and the marina reached an out-of-court settlement, and all the lawsuits and appeals were dropped. In March, work started again, and in June the marina opened.
The single, unresolved issue remains the $59,000 in fines still being sought by the Department of Ecology for what it is arguing was the construction of the marina without the proper permits. Twin Bridges is appealing the fines, contending it did have the proper permits. Youngsman notes no agency ever "red-tagged" the work or tried to stop the construction through a court injunction or other action once the final permits had been issued.
A Department of Ecology lawyer confirmed DOE is not seeking to close the marina and there's little question it will continue to operate.
"I would say that's true," said Thomas Young, DOE attorney.
Launches, even at low tide
The development covers some 18 acres. The storage area itself is the hangarlike, 55-foot-high, specially designed, insulated building that can hold 350 boats up to about 40 feet long, stacked in racks to the ceiling. It costs $200 a month to moor a boat 25 feet and under; a 40-footer runs about $500 a month.
A central part of the operation is a $210,000 forklift nothing like usual warehouse machinery.
Built by Wiggins Lift of Oxnard, Calif., the forklift can reach 40 feet into the air, but also can extend 16 feet below ground level. That allows launchings even in extreme low tides. It can be run with a tiny remote control.
Launching takes about five minutes. About 80 percent of the marina customers are from the Seattle area, and if they call on their way, their boats can be in the water with the engines warm when they arrive.
Youngsman also carefully checked launching statistics and found that maximum use at most marinas, even on the hottest days of the summer, is about 20 percent. So even if 50 people all want their boats at 9 a.m. on July 4, Twin Bridges will be able to accommodate them.
Launching takes place at a 150-foot-wide slip leading to a dredged industrial site along the slough. The marina itself sits 201 feet from the water, outside shorelines boundaries.
Youngsman admits there are some drawbacks to dry-stack moorage. Most sailboats, with their masts and deep keels, can't be accommodated. And boats in stacked moorage have to be moved to outside racks if an owner wants to do chores.
But Youngsman has found an answer to the complaint that it's impossible to sit at the dock and have a martini. He says he'll put a boat in the water and tie it up at the launching dock if a customer does want to do that.
Peyton Whitely can be reached at 206-464-2259 or at pwhitely@seattletimes.com.