Methanol lease to be decided in Lakewood conference center

When the Port of Tacoma commission decides whether to extend a lease provision for a controversial methanol plant, it will do so from a Lakewood conference center.

The meeting will be held at noon Monday, April 25, at the Clover Park Technical College’s McGavick Conference Center.

“It’s a combination of the availability, the capacity, the parking and the ability to accommodate live-streaming of the meeting that the community now expects of us,” said Lou Paulsen, Port of Tacoma director for strategic operations projects.

Paulsen said he expects the meeting to last two hours. The venue has room for 500 people.

Port of Tacoma commissioners had hoped to hear from project backer Northwest Innovation Works prior to the April 25 meeting, but a port spokeswoman said calendars for both parties did not align.

Some commissioners took the lack of flexibility as a sign that the company had lost interest in its Tacoma project. Northwest Innovation Works is planning two more plants to convert natural gas into methanol for export to China: one in Kalama and another near Clatskanie, Oregon. Tacoma’s project, if built, would be the largest methanol plant in the world. Once in China, methanol will be used to make plastics.

Without an extension in the feasibility period, the China-backed company could pay hundreds of thousands more dollars per month than its current $8,000 monthly terms. It would also lose the ability to back out of the lease if the feasibility period expires.

This story was originally published April 11, 2016 at 11:19 AM with the headline "Methanol lease to be decided in Lakewood conference center."