La Conner consultant Tom Beckwith is the man with a plan for the town’s formerly bustling south end industrial hub that is now an under-utilized commercial transitional area.
But what isn’t on paper is a new municipal code and zoning designations that would foster the kind of future mixed-use development that Beckwith’s team of architects and engineers has envisioned for the four-acre site.
And there’s a stark difference between a plan and a code, Town officials say.
“A plan helps guide development in a certain area,” Town Assistant Planner Ajah Eills said. “Codes are local laws. Codes are the regulations that are our laws and are passed by the Town Council.”
The Town of La Conner last year received a $45,000 state grant to develop a plan — not a code — to revitalize the south end parcels, most of which are owned by Triton America and formerly comprised the Moore-Clark fish feed manufacturing plant.
Triton, which Beckwith has said focuses on aviation and has little interest in development, purchased the property as a favor to the late La Conner developer Vaughn Jolley whose dream of breathing new life into the area had been thwarted by the Great Recession of 2008.
The Town received the 2024 grant because the property has lain mostly dormant for decades. Moore-Clark closed its La Conner operation, which employed nearly three dozen workers, in 1992 and relocated to Vancouver, B.C.
The intent of the grant was to finance the drafting of a plan for a wide range of uses in the south end sub-area should they eventually be compatible with Town codes and zoning and if the property were made available for development.
A lot of “ifs” come into play, Eills has indicated.
“It’s a guiding document,” she told the Town Planning Commission upon the advisory panel’s initial review of the Beckwith plan on Tuesday. “It would serve as a guide over a period of time. It’s not law.
“The Town isn’t a developer,” she explained the next day. “And the owners (Triton) don’t specialize in development.”
The Beckwith group began work last August. Its draft plan, crafted from similar projects elsewhere and local public input, features conceptual designs for future south end uses such as a farmer’s market, affordable housing, a performing arts center, and public shoreline access.
Eills said the plan has not yet undergone staff editing. Nor has the planning commission completed its study of the document, she said.
“The staff hasn’t made edits at this point,” said Ellis. “The planning commission has just seen what the consultant submitted. I anticipate the plan will come back to the planning commission a couple more times.”
The Beckwith team’s plan, or portions of it, is expected to be incorporated into the Town’s Comprehensive Plan. A long-term outline of community goals, the comp plan is currently being updated by the planning commission and Town staff. The deadline for those comp plan revisions is June 30.
Note: John Leaver serves on the La Conner Planning Commission and also serves on the interim fundraising board for La Conner Community News. The board is not empowered to influence or oversee any reporting on the newspaper, but we understand that this presents the appearance of a conflict of interest. The board will address this at their next regular meeting and report back to the community.
