Site work and new construction of an industrial development in Darrington, Washington. Completed plans call for the construction of a industrial development.

*As of 5/19/2022 this has not yet been awarded* https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/eight-years-after-deadly-landslide-near-darrington-new-industry-could-change-timber-town/ - DARRINGTON -- Once upon a time, timber made Darrington. Now, it could remake Darrington. That's the story Mayor Dan Rankin tells as he walks through the woods outside his mountain-rimmed community, which for decades has struggled with the decline of its old-school logging industry and which was traumatized eight years ago Tuesday by the deadliest landslide in U.S. history. Rankin is the driving force behind a $120 million plan to develop a manufacturing hub for cross-laminated timber panels and modular housing. Work should break ground soon in the small Snohomish County town, which was Ground Zero for the landslide's emergency response. Backed by the Seattle-based nonprofit Forterra, the Darrington Wood Innovation Center is supposed to invigorate the area with new technology and a more environmentally responsible approach, using timber from conservation harvesting to produce the panels, the panels to produce modular units and the units to build affordable housing across Washington. It's an exciting enterprise, though there are uncertainties.. Rankin wants to demonstrate how a rural community can thrive without discarding its heritage. While Darrington is also trying to attract tourists and the county has secured a state grant to support the installation of fiber-optic internet along the Highway 530 corridor, the mayor calls timber "part of our DNA." The CLT project is supposed to yield more than 120 jobs. "To be authentic to the generations that came before you, you need industry," the former logger said. "You need work that people can believe in." In conservation harvesting, or "thinning," certain trees are removed from unnaturally dense stands that were planted after clear-cutting decades ago. That can help the remaining trees grow larger and older, said Washington Wild executive director Tom Uniack, whose environmental organization supports some thinning specifically on U.S. Forest Service lands as part of a "dogs and cats" collaborative of unlikely allies that also includes Rankin and a local logging contractor. In CLT manufacturing, sheets of wood planks are stuck crosswise over each other and subjected to pressure or high-frequency waves. Computers cut the super strong, fire-resistant panels to size, with openings for doors, windows, wires -- even screws. Forterra is championing the plan partly because CLT can reduce the construction sector's reliance on concrete and steel, which require a lot of pollution to make, said Tobias Levey, the nonprofit's vice president of real estate transactions. Some University of Washington research has buttressed that idea, with caveats. "It's this incredibly basic material, just wood glued together," Levey said. "But it can have this very dramatic effect." The market for CLT in the U.S. is embryonic and modular housing is a new line of business for Forterra, which is partnering with European companies. Certain researchers have questioned the extent of the sustainability benefits, while others are supportive. Rankin has high hopes. In theory, the Darrington hub will eventually include a vocational component to train local students for high-tech jobs and draw them back as adults. Today, many leave after high school, "never to return," he said. Tucked between snow-capped peaks where the Sauk and Stillaguamish river valleys meet, an hour and a half northeast of Seattle, Darrington was established in the 1890s and grew with the timber industry. "Home of the Loggers" reads the side of the community center where the town's high-school basketball teams play. Once thriving, the town was pummeled by the "owl wars" of the 1980s and 1990s, Rankin said, when loggers and environmentalists battled over how to manage the forests of the Pacific Northwest and protect animals. Today, Darrington has one supermarket and one gas station. Mountain ramparts loom above a square-mile street grid lined with low-slung houses. There's still a sawmill, owned by Hampton Lumber, that remains the town's largest employer. But the median household income is about $37,700, half the statewide median, and the poverty rate is 20%, double the statewide rate, according to census estimates from 2019. Housing costs have increased, under pressure from prices "down below," in urban Snohomish County. Homelessness, too. Though many residents commute to Arlington and beyond, only one bus leaves town each morning. Marree Perrault, program manager at North Counties' Family Services in Darrington, sees the town's problems up close when parents stop by for help. "We have million-dollar views up here, but not enough living-wage jobs to pay for them," said Perrault. "A lot of our kids are hurting." The CLT plan and other community initiatives took shape, Rankin said, after a hillside collapsed between Darrington and Oso, destroying dozens of residences, killing 43 people and shutting down Highway 530 for months. The disaster known as the Oso landslide was a nightmare, but the way people in the area supported each other through tragedy was in Rankin's view a "horrible success," he said. "We brought everybody home," the mayor said, referring to a harrowing effort that reclaimed every victim from the debris. "Everything stemmed from that ... We showed the world our tenacity." ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2021/12/01/swiss-craftsmen-everett-warehouse.html Saws screeched and hammers pounded Tuesday in a drafty industrial building at the Port of Everett where a four-man team from Switzerland assembled the first prototypes of affordable housing modules. It was an important milestone in Seattle-based Forterra's Forest to Home initiative, which backers say will positively affect communities by creating jobs in Darrington -- site of the future Wood Innovation Center -- and hundreds of units of sustainably built housing both for sale and for rent in Tukwila, Tacoma, Roslyn and Hamilton in Skagit County. The impacts of Forest to Home concept ultimately could be felt across the country, according to leaders of Forterra, a nonprofit that conserves land and communities. In 2000, Forterra's idea for the CLT modular housing prototype, or ModPro, won Enterprise Community Partners and Wells Fargo's Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge. The win came with a $2 million grant to design and build the prototype using cross-laminated timber (CLT). Forterra President and CEO Michelle Connor beamed and said she was "sky high" watching workers from Swiss-based timber construction company Zaugg AG Rorrbach build the first ModPros. She envisioned people at the Darrington Wood Innovation Center (DWIC) working "high-tech, high-wage jobs to produce housing for our local communities." It was emotional for Linda Neunzig, the Snohomish County agriculture coordinator who has been working with leaders of Darrington, a timber town, since the deadly 2014 landslide in nearby Oso devastated the area. "This is the culmination of seven years of work going back to when we started seeking out someone to come to Darrington to bring CLT to life, creating jobs in an industry that the people of Darrington care about," she said. RECOMMENDED HEALTH CARE PHOTOS: Tennessee primary-care practice opens first Charlotte clinic with plans to expand RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE Housing forecast: How much Phoenix home prices will rise in 2022 BANKING & FINANCIAL SERVICES Broward woman convicted of PPP fraud scheme by federal jury Expected to open in 2023, the center is expected to create some 150 jobs building the modules for 150 homes each in mid-rise projects in Tukwila and Tacoma, 200 homes in Hamilton in Skagit County and at a project in Roslyn, which is in the early planning stages. When completed in the coming weeks, the modules will be toured on a flatbed truck around the region to show off what's possible. "As a nonprofit our goal is to help to display the technology so that other affordable housing developers know that there's another option besides 19th-century technology of sticks over bricks," said Tobias Levey, Forterra's vice president of transactions. He said the housing is faster and less expensive to build and creates a more "biophilic" living environment. A Harvard naturalist coined the word biophilia to describe the innate tendency of humans to be drawn to nature and natural products like wood. "There are all kinds of studies now coming out in Scandinavia that show living (around wood) has all kinds of health benefits that living in drywall-coated steel doesn't have," Levey said. Affordable housing developers are paying contractors from $400,000 to $800,000 a unit, according to Levey, who said two-bedroom ModPro units can be built for $120,000. Even with the cost of land, entitlements and other soft costs, "you're still just at $300,000 a door." Levey said Zaugg AG Rohrbach will operate the modular assembly facility at DWIC, where a joint venture of a German company, Styxworks, Forterra and a group of third-party investors, including Madrona Venture Group Managing Director Tom Alberg, will manufacture panels for the modules. The Forest to Home concept could expand beyond the Northwest because backers of the Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge will issue a request for proposals to East Coast developers to adapt the idea to their market, according to Connor. ________ https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2021/05/13/mass-timber-townhouse-project-beacon-hill.html 13 hours ago In Snohomish County, Forterra is backing the Darrington Wood Innovation Center, which will produce cross-laminated timber and be a hub for innovative wood product manufacturing when completed. ___________________________________________________________________ The Town of Darrington is an Equal Opportunity Employer. For more information, the Town Clerk can be contacted at 360-436-1131 M-F 9-4.