At our Nov. 18 2024 Rotary Meeting, our guest for the evening was our speaker Sara Young, executive director of Port of Skagit.
Sara gave us a brief history including how ports came about. The gold rush brought railroads to the area and everything was privately owned. Ports were created to have publicly owned/run centers of commerce such as railroad yards and water access. Port of Skagit started on a small piece of property in the area of Cosco. That was sold and developed. Anacortes had owned the property the airport is on. For awhile it was co-owned by Anacortes and Skagit county and is now owned by Skagit County. Port of Anacortes is the deep water port in Skagit county. After obtaining the airport land, it was decided to have a marina in La Conner which was built in the 1960s. Diversification of commerce is one of the goals of the Port which is why the Skagit regional airport and the surrounding lands were developed and there are expansion plans. Those plans include further building of commerce spaces and extending the runway. There is a US customs service there so international commerce jets can land there. The airport is a general aviation airport except for scheduled flights. Plans to redevelop the La Conner marina are being slowly developed with community input. The Swift Center which is 250 acres east of Sedro Woolley will be renovated and new buildings added. At present Job Corps is active out there.
Announcements:
Karen, Connie and Lori gave out dictionaries today to the third graders.