Open for business: ML port’s West Side Industrial Park ready to take on clients
Construction workers at the Port of Moses Lake's new West Side Industrial Park move dirt for Renton-based Stoke Space Technologies, which has announced it is building a rocket engine testing center on 2.3 acres leased from the port.
Charles H. Featherstone
Construction workers at the Port of Moses Lake's new West Side Industrial Park move dirt for Renton-based Stoke Space Technologies, which has announced it is building a rocket engine testing center on 2.3 acres leased from the port.
Construction workers at the Port of Moses Lake's new West Side Industrial Park move dirt for Renton-based Stoke Space Technologies, which has announced it is building a rocket engine testing center on 2.3 acres leased from the port.
Construction workers at the Port of Moses Lake's new West Side Industrial Park move dirt for Renton-based Stoke Space Technologies, which has announced it is building a rocket engine testing center on 2.3 acres leased from the port.
MOSES LAKE — The Port of Moses Lake’s West Side Industrial Park is now open for business.
The Port of Moses Lake finalized the creation of the roughly 2,300-acre local improvement district (LID), which will assess the eight property owners — including the port — for the $5.5 million cost of building Road G Northeast, as well as new water and sewer lines and an expansion of the port’s water treatment abilities.
The assessments for the local improvements will appear on the property owners’ 2022 property bills.
Currently, the park’s only client is Renton-based Stoke Space Technologies, which has started work on a facility to test rocket engines and technologies for reusable second stages. Stoke signed a five-year lease with the port for 2.3 acres in January.
Port Executive Director Don Kersey said the west side park was needed because the port’s east side industrial land is all taken.
“We’ve had very light interest, nothing serious at this point, but it will show much better with a road,” Kersey said. “We’ve had a lot of potential clients come across who have wanted 100 acres or more.”
Companies leasing or buying in the industrial park will be responsible for building facilities and bringing in power themselves.
To create access to the park, which extends along the western side of the Grant County International Airport, the port built Road G Northeast from the intersection of state Route 17 and McConihe Road Northeast, north to Road 10 Northeast, as well as several unpaved spurs into nearby parcels in case owners want access in the future.
Currently, the port farms several hundred acres with water from its industrial wastewater treatment center and trains its firefighters in firefighting techniques on an old aircraft propped up on concrete pillars, now on the side of Road G.
Milton Miller, the facilities director at the Port of Moses Lake, said the port is the largest landowner within the industrial park, and intends to pay off its portion of the development cost as quickly as possible.
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.
