BRINNON — A draft supplemental environmental impact statement is due in about two months on a massive resort that has stirred passions both at home and across the North Olympic Peninsula.
The proposed $300 million Pleasant Harbor Marina and Golf Resort has garnered opposition from The Brinnon Group, who say it is too large for a small, rural community.
It has received praise from a North Olympic Peninsula tourism industry leader, who said that the economic benefits of the 257-acre resort on Hood Canal would stretch across Clallam and Jefferson counties.
The writer of the draft supplemental environmental impact statement — or SEIS — says that The Statesman Group is turning its planned resort, which would be built three miles south of Brinnon on the Black Point peninsula, into an environmentally sound proposal.
“It looks pretty good from an environmental standpoint,” David Wayne Johnson, an associate planner with the Jefferson County Department of Community Development, said last week.
“There has been no SEIS, so all this is pie in the sky,” said Barbara Moore’lewis, who organized The Brinnon Group and has lived in Brinnon since 2003.
DCD last week posted Statesman’s preferred plan and another alternative from the company along with a description of the project at http://tinyurl.com/7yr6x3s.
Brinnon Group members are reviewing the newly issued plans, Moore’lewis said Tuesday.
“The community hasn’t had a chance to read this and talk about it,” she said.
“Half the people think it will never happen, and half the people think it’s a done deal.”
The Brinnon Group supports development at Black Point “that is of reasonable size, fits with the rural character of Brinnon, preserves the natural features of the area and protects Hood Canal,” according to its website at www.brinnongroup.org.
Statesman is paying Jefferson County the county’s standard rate of $71 an hour to write the draft SEIS.
“It is difficult to see how a county planner or department can be neutral about a plan if the planner’s salary is being paid by the developer,” Moore’lewis said.
Johnson said other writers hired to put together the study had quit.
“Ultimately, it is our EIS,” he said.
“It is common for us to direct the writing,” he added.
“We would treat it like any other project we review. We look at what’s proposed and what is required under the code and rely on other agencies to comment.”
Diane Shostak, executive director of the Olympic Peninsula Visitor Bureau, is excited by the planned resort.
“I’m just thrilled with it,” said Shostak, who has toured the site and followed the project since its genesis in 2006.
Clallam and Jefferson counties “are too tied together not to benefit from something of that magnitude in our neighborhood,” Shostak said, predicting resort visitors would travel to such destinations as Sequim and Olympic National Park.
Statesman wants to build 560 short-stay tourist units and 278 long-stay tourist units, 822 golf-resort residential units, an 18-hole golf course, 68 residential units in a “maritime village” that would include 51,000 square feet of commercial space, and a “golf resort” that would include 30,800-square-feet of commercial space.
The site already includes 285-slip Pleasant Harbor Marina, which Statesman owns and which will be renovated in the project’s first phase of construction.
“This is probably the best marina on Hood Canal,” marina co-manager Don Coleman said Tuesday, adding that the marina’s docks will be replaced.
While Johnson expects legal challenges to the proposal, enough changes have been made, including establishment of 150-foot shoreline buffers, that a positive DCD recommendation is in sight, Johnson said.
“There are people who want to stop it no matter what, but I don’t see anything that would really do that,” Johnson said.
Statesman President Garth Mann said in a telephone interview from his Scottsdale, Ariz., office that the proposal has evolved into an environmentally friendly project that deserves closer examination by its opponents.
“We tried our best to make it as environmentally sound as we could,” Mann said.
“It’s destined to be approved.”
The resort complex would be built in phases over 10 years “or in response to market demands,” the county’s website report said.
A DCD recommendation on the project will be included in the draft SEIS, Johnson said.
His draft report will be reviewed internally within Community Development and, once released to the public, will go through a public comment period and state Environmental Policy Act review.
Then it will be submitted to the county Planning Commission for a recommendation, which will forwarded to the county commissioners for final action.
Some key features of the Pleasant Harbor Marina and Golf Resort:
■ More water will be put back in the aquifer than is taken out, and recycled water will be used to replenish a redesigned, 6,400-yard golf course that will include half the sodded acreage of most other golf courses, Mann said.
■ A wastewater reclamation plant.
■ Generation of electrical power through an integrated system that combines Earth-generated geothermal technology.
Generation of heat and power derived from “cogeneration” systems fueled with biodiesel and power from the Mason County Public Utility District.
In cogeneration, useful heat is generated along with electricity.
“Waste heat” from equipment such as on-site generators will heat the resort’s spas and a new pool.
Buildings at the site have been reconfigured so they create far less impervious surface, Mann said.
Statesman’s website, www.statesmancorporation.com, already describes the resort in present-tense terms.
It includes drawings and photos and describes “The Sea View Villas: from $690,000. Large villas with two-car (boat and car) parking and 2 or 3 bedroom plans” and “1 to 3 bedroom Resort Chalets, Golf Villas or Maritime Casitas.”
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
