To all who care about the future of Federal Way, join us in saving the Weyerhaeuser campus from becoming an industrial warehouse complex.
We are fast approaching a defining moment in the history of our young city. We have a difficult but critical choice to make. We will either stand by and allow one of our most cherished and iconic properties to be desecrated, or we will stand up together and say, “No. This is not what we want for our community.”
The choice cannot be delayed, and it cannot be left for someone else to make. The easy path is to stand aside while Industrial Realty Group clears the forests, paves the headwaters of the Hylebos Watershed, builds over 1 million square feet of warehouse space and brings 1,200 noisy, polluting semi-trailer trucks each day through the already congested downtown Federal Way core area. The true path, however, the path that will serve the future of our city decades after IRG has made their money and gone home, is to summon the courage and resolve to stand in the way of IRG’s plans, to recognize that the highest value of the Weyerhaeuser campus is in the preservation of its unique natural features and its essential character as promised and required by the concomitant agreement and the city ordinance that authorized it back in 1994. IRG’s plans make a mockery of that promise, and of the residents and organizations of Federal Way and the state of Washington to whom it was made.
The Weyerhaeuser campus should be to the Federal Way of the future what Central Park is to New York City, an oasis of natural beauty, community gathering, educational activity, sanctuary, peacefulness and limited development that supports those purposes. Current plans and visions of our city’s downtown core are exciting and promise a vibrant, progressive Federal Way of tomorrow. I can only hope that we have the wisdom and resolve to prevent an industrial warehousing complex being built right in the middle of that future.
I call on all interested parties to work together to prevent this atrocity, to lend their expertise, passion, energy, resources and money to join the Save Weyerhaeuser Campus Organization’s efforts to preserve the campus as a central asset of a better Federal Way. To join us in standing up for Federal Way, see our website, saveweyerhaeusercampus.org. The time is now. Tomorrow will be too late.
Dr. Michael C. Brown, Federal Way
