John White

Controversy as a Way of Life

We at JD White proudly celebrate our 30th year in business in 2006 and the occasion will be marked in various ways. For me, one of the more meaningful is reflecting on our activities, and I must admit that I am proud and awed by the breadth of our reach over these three decades. Although this would never be part of any sane business plan, one of the characteristics of this firm’s practice has been that we’ve never backed away from controversy, either in what we believed was right or in the projects we’ve taken on. Projects that are taken for granted today—Lacamas Shores, the River Road Generating Plant, Lieser Point—were extremely difficult and highly emotional during their approval process. Lacamas Shores woke up the sleepy mill town that Camas used to be, the generating plant was an unheard-of attempt at local control of electrical power generation, and Lieser Point was a prototype of upscale residential development on the Columbia River, an environment that historically had been the possession of the few.

Many of our projects have been harbingers of impending change in the community—change that has not necessarily been universally embraced by those who find themselves in its path. No project is a better illustration than Lacamas Shores, the upscale housing and golf course development on the west side of Lacamas Lake. The controversy over the proposed development, though, was really just another chapter in an ongoing contest between the rights of the land owner and the expectations that some in the community held of that land owner.

It’s hard to log property in this day and age and make friends in the process. The west side of Lacamas Lake had been a dense forest which represented two incompatible visions. From the land owner’s perspective, it represented the value of the timber. For some in the community, it was the perfect backdrop to peaceful times fishing or boating on the lake. The site was logged— in complete compliance with existing laws and regulations— and the unfriendly reaction of some in the community was predictable.

...we believed that our knowledge of this community and our ability to convey information effectively would help bring balance to the debate.

But in our 30th year, we are engaged in what I would suggest is our most controversial representation to date: to bring 152 acres of land at the La Center interchange into trust and build the Cowlitz Casino and Resort near La Center. Many of my friends and associates are solidly supportive of this project. Others think I must have lost my mind to be in the middle of such an effort. This project, however, is a good demonstration of why and how we choose to become involved. I believe it’s a story worth telling.

Early on, the Cowlitz Tribe—who after a decades-long struggle had finally achieved federal recognition—had been represented by out-of-town legal counsel, whose style was what I refer to as the school of “helmet on, head on.” In other words, just keep moving down the road and pay no attention to those who don’t want you to do what you’re proposing. The Cowlitz—and their development partners, the Mohegan Tribe, realized the shortcomings of such an approach. As a result, our company was invited to talk to the tribes about a more productive approach. The tribes wanted us to design and implement a constructive communications and outreach strategy between the community and the project.

The substance of such a strategy would be based on the fact that the Cowlitz Tribe had already signed a memorandum of understanding with Clark County which was unprecedented in its generosity, agreeing to make payments that are equal to what would be paid by an identical private development, create a substantial arts and education fund for reinvestment in the community, and pay for needed transportation improvements, among other provisions. All of which, the Tribe agreed, could be enforced in Superior Court through a waiver of the Tribe’s sovereign status. Even on the national level, this is simply unheard of.

Understanding that the approach to the community had shifted away from “helmet on, head on” and that the project was more likely to happen than not, the question was simple: would the involvement of The JD White Company make the delivery of the project better from the community’s standpoint? We put that question to our staff. After some spirited dialogue (including sharing some deeply held moral and religious beliefs), we agreed because we believed that our knowledge of this community and our ability to convey information effectively would help bring balance to the debate.

How have we been able to help? By delivering factual information so citizens can understand what is really going on, building a web site full of useful information and links (www.cowlitzcasino.com), organizing dozens of speaking engagements for project representatives, and assisting the development of agreements with local jurisdictions, we do believe we’ve helped enlighten the debate, if not change opinions.

Thirty years. We believe we’ve been part of building a better community. And we’ve set out to do it for another thirty.

John White is the founder and now vice president of JD White., a division of BERGER/ABAM Engineers. Contact John to see how JD White can work for you.

This article was originally published in the White Report, June 2006.