The Port of Whitman County Commissioners are hopeful that Washington State University will reverse course and continue with a plan to repurpose the university’s steam plant building near downtown Pullman.
The port received word from WSU President Kirk Schulz this month that the institution was pulling the plug on the port led effort to repurpose the facility into a space for businesses, offices and community gatherings. Schulz told the port commissioners that the public space wouldn’t be compatible with the facility’s continued operations using gas-fired boilers to help heat campus.
The port began looking at the facility for possible reuse two years ago garnering support from WSU on multiple occasions. President Schulz penned two letters of support for port grant applications for the project. In May WSU Vice President for Research Chris Keane publicly announced the institution’s support for the project.
In a response letter from the port to WSU the commissioners reminded President Schulz that during 15 months of site research, including multiple tours of the building and meetings with engineers, WSU never found that the project would inhibit ongoing operations inside the steam plant. Architects determined that about 37,000 square feet of the building could be utilized while protecting existing industrial operations. The response letter from the port asked WSU to take part in a meeting today to discuss the project. An email from WSU to the port on Friday declined the offer to attend the meeting but stated that they are working on a detailed response to the commissioners objections to the decision to end the project. Port officials during today’s meeting interpreted the email as WSU possibly being open to continuing with the potential project.
The port had been allocated a quarter million dollars in grants to examine environmental cleanup of the steam plant site for the proposed reuse project. The facility was built in 1927 to heat campus using coal-fired steam boilers. The coal-fired steam plant was closed nearly 20 years ago. The project was expected to cost over 30 million dollars.
