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Port of Centralia Commissioner Ally Pickard let out a flurry of motions at the end of a commission meeting last week in an effort to change the port's course on its appeal of a study essential to a proposed Centralia subdivision.
The three members of the Port of Centralia Commission met on Wednesday afternoon for what started as a routine meeting.
However, the meeting finished with four failed motions from Pickard concerning the port's appeal of a State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) analysis for a proposed Centralia housing development known publicly as Norwegian Woods.
Just like negotiations over the ongoing Centralia warehouse and distribution center moratorium and many other local issues, the topic again comes back to one issue: traffic on Harrison Avenue.
Pickard made her motions after the commissioners returned from a roughly hour-long executive session during which they discussed qualifications of applicants for the port’s executive director position and potential litigation.
Immediately after their return, Pickard first motioned to waive the port’s attorney-client privilege in order to discuss the executive session topics in full during the meeting. When it failed, she motioned to formally withdraw the port’s appeal of a SEPA analysis for the Norwegian Woods development.
Finally, she motioned to vote on a new legal strategy for the port regarding local traffic issues and motioned the port to consider new legal representation. All four motions died on arrival, receiving no seconds from fellow commissioners Peter Lahmann and Kyle Markstrom.
Visibly frustrated after the lack of support for her motions, Pickard said “can’t say I didn’t try” before moving to adjourn the meeting.
This is not the first time since taking office in January that Pickard has attempted to alter the port’s course on its appeal of the Norwegian Woods SEPA analysis. She made a similar motion to terminate the appeal in her first meeting as a commissioner in January. She has also raised the issue of the port’s appeals for discussion in a previous meeting, referring to them as “ineffective, expensive and wrong.”
According to documents included in a Centralia Planning Commission agenda for a meeting last June, the Norwegian Woods subdivision is proposed for a site across Harrison Avenue from the Harrison RV/Mobile Home Park near the intersection of Harrison Avenue and Goodrich Road. The proposal includes the development of a 16-lot subdivision along Harrison Avenue. The preliminary plat shows two lots for existing houses and 14 others to include “four-plexes.”
The appeal of the SEPA filed for the development has seemingly been wrapped up in the warehousing permitting battle that has engulfed the port, the city and the county since the City of Centralia enacted its moratorium on permitting warehouses over 250,000 square feet in size in September 2025.
The port appealed the SEPA not long after that moratorium was enacted. Former Port of Centralia Executive Director Kyle Heaton announced the appeal during a port commission meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 15, according to previous reporting by The Chronicle. He added at the time that the port was appealing the SEPA because it did not believe it adequately addressed traffic concerns, which have also driven the city’s warehouse moratorium.
While making her motions to change course on the SEPA appeal, Pickard cited “new information” and also mentioned recent activity from the Centralia City Council as it moves to consider traffic impact fees on new developments instead of traffic mitigation fees.
The city council approved a traffic impact fee study with just over $30,000 during its March 24 meeting. An engineering firm hired by the city to help with its recent comprehensive plan update, Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc., will also lead the study and use information it collected during the comprehensive plan work to develop and propose an impact fee structure to the city.
The proposed structure is expected to come before the city council in the fall, at which time council members would be able to vote in favor of the switch or stick with its current mitigation fee structure.
According to Centralia City Engineer Patty Page, the new model would “spread it out” by requiring more developers to pay into the city's transportation projects. Current mitigation fees only require payments from developments near a transportation project included in the city's six-year plan. Exactly who would pay the impact fees or how much they would pay is uncertain until the study is completed.
Pickard commented in favor of the impact fee structure during the council meeting, pointing out that recently a new pharmacy built along Harrison Avenue paid more in mitigation fees despite its small size when compared with a large housing development constructed south of the Centralia viaduct.
The earlier part of the Wednesday port commission meeting lasted just 20 minutes and included no major developments or moments of contention other than Pickard urging fellow commissioner Lahmann to give more information on a recent meeting with the City of Centralia and Lewis County discussing the city's moratorium on permitting large warehouses in the area.
Lahmann brought up the meeting during his commissioner report, stating simply that the interested parties had met and that they would meet again soon. Pickard pressed for more information, asking if any decisions were made or if there were any actionable items discussed that the port could work on.
After some discussion, Lahmann revisited his own stance against the moratorium and added that the parties had agreed to come back to the table with “vision statements” or descriptions of what the local governments would like to see at some of the nearby properties that were expected to be developed into warehouses.
Pickard urged the commission to schedule the vision statement as an item to be discussed during the port's next meeting.
