The Spokane area could benefit economically if a conceptual strategy unveiled earlier this year to turn Moses Lake into a major inland freight hubessentially moving some shipping activity across the Cascades from Seattlewere to materialize, suggests former Washington Gov. Mike Lowry.


I certainly would hope it would build commerce in all of Eastern Washington. I would want that to be the effect, he says. Doing much of the staging work at an inland port would allow us to move cargo more expeditiously time-wise and cost-wise, and that is the basic concept were looking at.


Lowry is founder and chairman of Enterprise Washington, a public, nonprofit organization devoted to boosting economic conditions in distressed areas of the state. A study conducted for the group and outlined at a Leadership Conference 99 gathering held here in October found that developing Moses Lake into a multimodal logistics hub, more effectively linking the states seaports and busy Sea-Tac Airport to inland transportation routes, could benefit trade by avoiding severe Puget Sound traffic.


The creation of such an inland transportation hub would both improve Washington states competitive position as a northwestern gateway and act as a means for industrial development and job creation east of the Cascades, the study says.


Franco Eleuteri, who prepared the study for Enterprise Washington and is vice president of Chicago-based Frederick R. Harris/McClier Integrated Transportation & Logistics, says he believes creating a major inland freight hub is essential if Washington is to compete with other West Coast ports in the future.


The future is, unless you provide a multimodal-logistic capability (that allows quick transfer of import-export goods between air, sea, and land modes of transportation), youre basically out of the game, Eleuteri says.


The study he prepared for Enterprise Washington is called FASTER, which stands for Freight Action Strategy Eastern Route. Its intended to be a complementary strategy to one called FAST, for Freight Action Strategy Corridor, thats being implemented now between Everett and Tacomaat a projected cost of $350 million to $400 millionto alleviate freight congestion along that corridor.


FASTER recommends turning Moses Lake into a freight hub because of its location along Interstate 90 and near two main rail feeders that move freight eastward from the coast. Another key factor it cites is the presence there of Grant County International Airport, an underutilized, former military facility thats able to accommodate the largest freight-carrying aircraft. The airport is located in a foreign trade zone and includes a U.S. Customs office.


Establishing inland port functions there would enable the expedited movement of eastbound containers, offloaded from large ships and transported to Moses Lake by rail, reducing urban truck traffic, the study says. The air capability would provide Sea-Tac with a reliever-overflow facility for air cargo, which might be particularly valuable for night cargo flights, due to concerns about noise over heavily populated areas, it says.


Al Anderson, industrial development manager for the 4,700-acre Port of Moses Lake, says, The general feeling is that the Puget Sound needs to reduce their transportation problems, and this is one of the ideas that could work. We are working with the ports of Seattle and Tacoma to kind of help this idea.


Terry Brewer, executive director for the Grant County Economic Development Council, says, Were all in favor of working to make that happen. We dont believe its something that Grant County can or should take on alone. Its possible that a number of the states ports might collaborate to fund a more in-depth study looking at the inland, or satellite, port concept, he says.


The toughest thing right now is the enactment of I-695. That sets a bunch of plans back, Brewer says. We hope we can keep it on the shelf and wait for the opportunity, and we believe that opportunity might come with the continued look at (proposals for) decongestion on the I-5 corridor.


One company that already has established a strong presence in Moses Lake in anticipation of a business buildup there is Seattle-based Aerospace Port International Group Inc., known informally as the Aspi Group.


The trade and property-development company, which has donated money to Enterprise Washington, began investing in real estate in Moses Lake about 10 years ago and now owns about 10,000 acres there, including 800 acres of light-to-heavy-industrial-zoned land at the airport. Kim Foster, Aspi Groups corporate counsel, says the companys financial investment to date there is $50 million to $100 million.


Aspi Group has established a strategic alliance with Redmond, Wash.-based Sierra Construction, one of the states largest builders of industrial tilt-up concrete structures, for the construction of buildings at the airport, Foster says. The two companies recently collaborated to develop a 25,000-square-foot building in a 250-acre commerce park area there, and work is expected to begin there next spring on a much larger building, he says.


Foster claims the Puget Sound bubble is bursting as heavy-industrial and larger-footprint companies there find it a virtual impossibility to expand at their present locations due to limited land availability or high property costs. Those difficulties, coupled with a complete overtaxing of the infrastructure in the Puget Sound area, are causing many such businesses to look at moving elsewhere.


Rich Hadley, president and CEO of the Spokane Area Chamber of Commerce, says he imagines the creation of a major freight hub in Moses Lake could benefit Eastern Washington. He notes, though, that the FASTER study outlined by Eleuteri at the leadership conference held here in October didnt sway those attending enough to cause them to include it on a list of priority agenda items.


Howard Granger, Spokane-based business and economic-development representative for the Port of Seattle, says the idea of a major inland freight hub sounds good in concept, but market factorsincluding railroad disinterest in short-haul activity make it unlikely to occur any time soon.


Longer term, given the increasingly crammed environment for doing business in the Puget Sound area, anything is possible, he says. Were going to receive some of that overflow through osmosis, if nothing else, he says.


Despite the various obstacles, Lowry says that he intends to use the studys findings as a basis for further discussions and hopefully to bring together a coalition of people in business who think this is something important to do.