About 40 local residents gathered at the Sumas American Legion Post 212 on Sept. 4 for a third government presentation about plans to expand the Sumas and Lynden border crossings.
The meeting, mostly a recitation of slides outlining the Environmental Impact Statement process, felt routine. General Service Administration staffers took no questions as they explained the timeline and the process for making public comments during a 45-day period that ends Sept. 26. The audience — including Sumas mayor Bruce Bosch, city planner Carson Cortez, city council member Jessica Koehler and planning commission member Helen Solem — neither grumbled nor applauded.
Afterward, things got livelier, providing a glimpse of some of the ways that the project and its funding, estimated at $135 million to $155 million for Sumas, stands to affect a town of about 1,500 that has little actual say in the changes to its one commercial street. (The Lynden expansion is estimated at about $100 million.)
GSA staff, Customs and Border Protection officials, representatives from the U.S. Department of Labor and leaders from the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters stayed for more than an hour to chat and answer questions.
A court reporter was on hand to transcribe oral comments, while other attendees wrote out their statements on forms provided or took them home to complete later
Known in government-speak as LPOEs (Land Ports of Entry), the two crossings are to get extra lanes, more efficient screening setups and better accommodations for commercial and pedestrian travelers. The Lynden/Aldergrove crossing at the end of the Guide Meridian will also be equipped to convert to 24-hour service. [Ed.: Updated Sept. 11, 2024. A previous version said the station would convert to 24-hour service.]
A bite from downtown
Ten structures in Sumas, including the American Legion site of the meeting, are within the proposed project boundary of about 14 acres — an expansion from its current four acres. Most are businesses, some active and some closed as the town has struggled from pandemic border restrictions and catastrophic flooding. They would be purchased by the government for demolition, and GSA relocation specialists were on hand Wednesday night to talk with property owners about their options.
Stephen Jordan, adjutant for Legion Post 212, said in an email that the organization is considering ideas for relocation when its building is purchased. A move to Everson or Nooksack, who do not have their own Legion posts, is a possibility. Two of the group’s most popular community traditions, Friday Burger Nights and the annual Howard Bowen Fishing Derby in Johnson Creek, will continue in the meantime along with its other activities.
Just outside the boundary is the Old Border Station, a many-gabled brick structure that was scheduled for demolition by the GSA during the previous border crossing expansion in 1987. Instead, after a public campaign and a threatened lawsuit, it was moved, slowly and carefully, to its current site on Harrison Street in 1990. Built in 1931 and now privately owned and mostly vacant, it is a notable sight among the mostly utilitarian downtown business buildings.
At the time of the move, it had informal protected status as a longtime annual migration and nesting site for Vaux’s swifts. Thousands of the speedy birds would plummet nightly down its brick chimney in the summers, to the delight of birdwatchers and the relief of neighbors who otherwise might have had their own chimneys targeted. The swifts’ numbers began to dwindle in the 1990s, and none have been recorded for more than a decade. The building’s survival during this latest upheaval is once again precarious.
The opportunity side — a megaproject
The U.S. Department of Labor puts a selection of large construction projects with federal funding into a specific category called megaprojects. According to its Office of Federal Compliance Programs website, “Projects eligible for designation as megaprojects are valued at $35 million or more in funding, some part of which must be federal funding, and are expected to last for at least one year.”
The designation brings help from the Labor department in recruiting local contractors and workers and building job training programs. The Sumas and Lynden border expansions comprise the only current megaproject in Washington. Department staff held a series of meetings in Bellingham and Whatcom County in early September to help local contractors and unions with keeping the construction jobs local.
Lisa Marx of Bellingham, a union representative for the carpenters union Local 70, was at the meeting Sept. 4. She is involved in launching union supervised pre-apprenticeship certification programs at Lummi Nation and Ferndale High School and hopes to expand to other county school districts.
As someone who pivoted into the local building trades in her 40s and found job stability and a living wage, she is a fervent advocate for programs that can provide a smooth entry into work in the trades. Construction for the border projects is anticipated to begin in 2026. By then she hopes to see groups of young workers emerging from Whatcom County high schools, ready to start union apprenticeships.
In her comments to the project’s preliminary Scoping Report last year, she wrote that “I am passionate about volunteering and working to help other underrepresented populations find opportunity and hope through construction apprenticeship and pre apprenticeship programs. … We have so much opportunity here in Whatcom County with all this growth to provide these opportunities to our youth, women, BIPOC and other underrepresented communities. We could be expanding their education opportunities by choosing responsible bidders for these projects.”
Other commenters urged the GSA to take local realities into account by maximizing pervious surfaces to reduce water runoff and by working with the city to make the transition from downtown to international border as welcoming as possible for residents and visitors alike.
Assuming the EIS is approved, the GSA hopes to award contracts for the design and construction of both projects in late 2025, with actual building to begin in the fall of 2026.
The Salish Current is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, online local news organization serving Whatcom, San Juan and Skagit counties by reporting local news with independence and strict journalistic integrity, and by providing fact-based information and a forum for civil commentary.
