Port, BoCC meet

The Whitman County Commissioners and the Port of Whitman County Commissioners had a combined workshop Monday. At the workshop, the port gave presentations on a couple of projects for which they would like to partner with the county.

The port listed five goals: one- to support legacy businesses and identify opportunities around regional infrastructure, two- to create a craft industrial campus at industrial park west, three- to expand partnerships with Washington State University, four- to lead fiber provision to rural communities and five- to communicate the port’s initiatives to the public.

The port went into detail on goals two and three, which are closely related, and four.

On goal two, the port mentioned the spiking growth of jobs in the food and beverage industries in eastern Washington.

“The idea is to pivot towards craft agricultural industrial, and what they’re calling at WSU now the liquid arts,” said the Port Executive Director, Joe Poiré.

A part of this new focus is craft beers and ciders and artisan wines. The port has been having weekly to bi-weekly meetings with WSU on a possible partnership to build facilities to link this growing industry with university research.

“The approach would be to build facilities that could link the research together with private sector value-added ag products,” said Poiré.

Some of the talks include possibly building a micro malting machine to test strains of barley in small batches. The cost of building a micro malting machine could be $40,000, which is relatively inexpensive.

Currently, the port is working with the School of Architecture to develop concept designs for the project. Part of the design would include a live-work space, a residential area in close proximity to where individuals work.

The port mentioned a couple different financing options. Apart from traditional financing, in 2019 the Department of Commerce has up to $3 million per project for infrastructure.

While discussing expanding partnerships with WSU, goal three, the fact that WSU has its Drive for 25 campaign was brought up.

“Drive to 25” is a push to be among the top 25 research and agriculture campuses in the nation. This opens the university up for interesting research opportunities. Collaboration around designing a food hub or co-op is one such opportunity.

“The commercialization activities are already happening with the bread lab and Skagit, and the malting in two different location in Washington,” said Poiré, “We’re looking to bring that over here to Eastern Washington.”

The school’s food systems people are willing to work with the port, and together they are doing conceptual designs. The micro malt machine and the research it could provide is a small thing, but can help the local growers.

The cost of building an industrial park area like the port is discussing in collusion with these WSU research programs, and the possibility of having a food co-op, public traffic and farmers market areas included, is estimated at about $675,000 an acre.

Port Commissioner Tom Kammerzell pointed out the potential of such an area.

“Foodies is a popular deal right now,” he commented.

Unlike on some past projects, WSU and the City of Pullman seem as fired up for this expanding brewing, malting and related breeding research for barley and wheat in the county as the port.

Separate is the ports project to take fiber out to rural communities, as listed as part of goal four. The port has partnered with Noel Communications in lighting the fiber and retail provisioning of this project.

Not only is the port taking fiber out to five communities in the county, but to assist the people outside of towns the port is extending fiber optic lines from three areas to access points.

Local wireless carriers are ready to partner with the port to help with the fiber project, and larger carriers are still doing preliminary research before coming to terms.

Both projects are still in the early phases. The County Commissioners will put further discussion of funding and partnership with the Port of Whitman on their workshop agenda.