Prologis Park Update – March 2023
Just before the winter holidays, friends at LULAC notified Alliance for Community Engagement (ACE) about a large new warehouse called Prologis Park planned for the Fruit Valley Neighborhood (FVN). FVN residents hadn’t heard about Prologis Park, and the proposed warehouse’s public comment period was set to end Dec. 29th, 2022. Can you say hot potato?
ACE and LULAC went into a combined rapid-response effort. First, we requested information from the City. Prologis Park is already “vested” (approved) and, like seven other warehouses pending before the City, not covered by the City’s recent Warehouse Moratorium. In its proposal, Prologis had filed documents indicating that its 561,793 square foot warehouse would bring over 1,900 trucks a day through FVN and other neighborhoods–but claimed this traffic would not have negative impacts.
LULAC started informing FVN residents and notifying affected neighborhood associations. ACE wrote and solicited letters to the City requesting a change from its “Mitigated Determination of Nonsignificance” for Prologis Park, to a “Determination of Significance,” which would trigger a full Environmental Impact Statement and allow for more public input.
ACE, FOCC, LULAC, Community Roots Collaborative, Vancouver Audubon and neighborhood associations have equity concerns about this warehouse being built in a diverse, low-income neighborhood that is already overexposed to air pollution. Additional concerns include lack of adequate notification, noise levels and how pollution from trucks will affect waterways and birds. We don’t see how a warehouse with this many diesel trucks could align with the City’s recently adopted Climate Action Framework, which has a goal of 80% greenhouse gas emissions reductions city-wide by 2035 (12 years from now).
On Dec. 22, ACE, LULAC and FOCC submitted a letter to the City detailing our concerns about Prologis. The City responded by extending the project’s public comment period. At the time of writing, the City’s comment period for the Prologis Park warehouse proposal is still open. Comments can be sent directly to Mark Person, AICP Senior Planner at mark.person@cityofvancouver.us
On Feb 7, The Columbian covered City Council’s vote to approve a six-month Warehouse Moratorium, (with an increase to warehouse size covered by the Moratorium to 250,000 square feet.) On Feb 8, KGW News followed up with “Vancouver Pumps the Brakes on Building Big Warehouses.” Then on Feb 16, Lauren Ellenbecker, The Columbian’s community-journalism funded Environmental Reporter, wrote an excellent piece called “Fruit Valley Residents Wary of Warehouse Plan.”
Submitted by Heidi Cody, Co-Director of Alliance for Community Engagement (ACE)