Wonderful Weyerhaeuser campus north of Tacoma can be saved, but not frozen in time
Next year the former Weyerhaeuser corporate campus in Federal Way turns 50, the age when properties so architecturally prestigious, culturally significant and environmentally spectacular can be considered for national historic register or landmark status.
Like many admirers in the greater South Sound region, we’d like to see the former timber company headquarters saved for posterity. But the right of the owner to develop the property can’t be denied, regardless of national letter-writing campaigns and other ongoing displays of preservationist spirit.
Nestled on 425 mostly wooded acres between Interstate 5 and State Route 18, the Weyerhaeuser campus has the aura of an Elysian field plopped down in the middle of suburban freeway sprawl. The low-slung, ivy-draped HQ building, erected in 1972 during the infancy of America’s environmental movement, blends seamlessly into the surroundings.
Add a rhododendron garden, bonsai museum and more than 10 miles of walking trails, and you have a post-industrial oasis that our region shouldn’t take for granted.
Alas, the fate of the campus remains precarious, five years after Weyerhaeuser sold it to a developer and moved to downtown Seattle.
Plans for a massive warehouse project prompted a recent letter-writing campaign by several renowned landscape architects and designers.
Among them was the last living member of the original Weyerhaeuser design team: landscape architect Peter Walker, who went on to design the 9/11 Memorial in New York. In a Feb. 1 letter to Federal Way’s mayor, Walker wrote that of all his projects, Weyerhaeuser was “certainly the dearest to my heart;” he added that he fears losing “losing such an important artifact, representative of the best of its era … in such a careless and undignified way.”
The property owner, Los Angeles-based Industrial Realty Group, rebranded the site Woodbridge Corporate Park in 2019; IRG plans three large warehouse projects totaling 1.5 million square feet and has land-use approval for the first one.
A King County judge last year turned down appeals by an opposition group, Save Weyerhaeuser Campus; the judge ruled that IRG’s initial plans largely comply with Federal Way’s regulations.
IRG is required to mitigate impacts like watershed loss and increased traffic, estimated at 800 trucks a day. In addition, the company has pledged to retain the HQ building, garden, museum and most of the trails. This ought to help ease fears of a concrete wasteland.
Even so, the company should take additional measures as a good-faith gesture.
One easy step would be to reopen the trails, where COVID-19 closure signs have been posted since last year. This doesn’t convey the welcoming message that IRG should be sending right now. Surely if public parks and recreational trails can open safely, the Weyerhaeuser trails can, too.
Dick Pierson, a retired 27-year Weyerhaeuser employee who lives a mile from campus, wrote in a TNT letter that he worries “these signs are an introduction to a permanent change” once warehouses are constructed. He’s a member of the Save Weyerhaeuser Campus group.
There are bigger-picture measures IRG should consider, such as amending covenants and deed restrictions to limit future development on parts of campus. The company could also grant easements for public access and possibly sell some land to the preservation group.
The bottom line is that IRG is not just a landowner; it’s also the caretaker of a community trust — one that’s precious to scores of neighbors, open-space advocates and Weyerhaeuser retirees.
“You ask any Weyerhaeuser employee, and they’ll tell you how fantastic it was to be in that environment,” Nancy Oltman, a Tacoma resident and former 25-year employee, told the TNT editorial page editor Wednesday. “It was such a calming, serene place to work. We were just so proud to be part of such a beautiful place.”
To allow warehouses there looks “provincial and short-sighted,” she added.
Those feelings are understandable, but so is the property owner’s expectation to return a profit on a $70-plus million investment. Like it or not, warehouses are permitted by city zoning, and their proximity to major freeways and the Port of Tacoma make them a job-creating fixture in the regional economy.
Meantime, the era of the suburban corporate office park with desks for 1,000 employees is gone. Companies that want central office space now prefer large cities with urban amenities — think Weyerhaeuser and Amazon. And in the new normal of the post-COVID world, more employers are likely to eschew the big HQ model entirely.
Weyerhaeuser preservationists can take satisfaction knowing they helped stop a fish-processing center from locating there. They can keep pressing for concessions, such as scaled-back warehouses. But they should be careful not to lose focus on saving the crucial parts of the property: the main building and its views, the museum, gardens and trails.
The 1972 Weyerhaeuser campus in Federal Way is not unlike the 1923 Weyerhaeuser mansion in Tacoma’s North End. Both are grand, historic properties worth treasuring. But neither can return to its original purpose or be frozen in time.