It’s a waiting game for the city of Kent, in its bid to bring a new Federal Aviation Administration facility to town.
Ben Wolters, the city’s economic development director, said Tuesday that FAA officials made a visit to Kent’s proposed site April 2.
“You know, I thought we did well,” Wolters said, noting their informal comments at the time were along the lines of “very impressive.”
Now, he said, Kent is waiting on FAA to rank all the sites it’s evaluated in its review – roughly 20 or so, and all in the south King County area. Depending on how it’s ranked, Wolter said, Kent could either choose to remain in the competition for the site, or to withdraw its proposal.
For now, the development official said, the city is waiting.
“We’ll simply await the results,” he said. “They haven’t defined a deadline for when they will provide responses.”
Kent is competing for the site along with the cities of Renton, Tukwila, Des Moines and SeaTac.
The prize is a 519,000-square-foot warehouse and office facility that would bring under one roof FAA workers who are now based in Renton, Alaska and Oregon. About 1,600 workers would relocate from Renton FAA headquarters, while the remaining 400 would come from other parts of the FAA’s northwest region.
The city, working in league with a developer and a construction firm, is offering a 15.5-acre site in the Kent Valley, taking in a parcel known as the Naden property, which it had originally acquired for a future aquatic center. If the FAA project comes through, the city would look for an alternate site for the new pool.
The Naden site is south of West Meeker Street, north of Willis Street and east of Naden Avenue, south of Meeker. Its western boundary is Highway 167, and its eastern boundary is comprised of railroad tracks.
The city owns 10 acres, and the balance is made up of adjacent private property and a right of way from Puget Sound Energy.
Having such a facility in Kent would bring in tax and lease funds, but it’s the dollars that FAA workers would spend in Kent businesses that has really captured city interest. All those workers need, at the very least, meals in town, and the Naden property is close enough to the city’s downtown to make that a possibility.
When asked what were the top three incentives that the FAA could find in Kent, Wolters gave a quick synopsis.
“Number one is location,” Wolters said. “It’s a convenient location for their employees. Two: the amenitites that our site provides that meets the (FAA site) criteria, which includes proximity to shops, banks restaurants, transit and commuter rail. And third: we offer a site that has a tremedous amount of flexibility that would allow us to optimize (the best building design.)”
Kent’s other strength, according to Wolters, comes from the companies with whom it’s partnered to court the FAA: Hines Development, one of the world’s largest developers; and M.A. Mortenson, a nationally recognized construction firm and builder of the ShoWare Center.
Houston, Texas-based Hines, which has a branch office in Seattle, has worked on more than 700 projects and is involved in more than $13 billion in real estate developments. Wolters said the firm has developed roughly 1 million square feet in federal projects.
Locally, the company is responsible for the design of the Fifth Avenue Plaza building and the IDX Tower, both in downtown Seattle.
Mortenson is based out of Minneapolis and has a western regional office in Bellevue. It most recently was involved in the renovation of the Seattle Courthouse, in addition to its award-winning work on the ShoWare Center. The company also has extensive background in federal projects.
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