Reimagining the Willapa
WILLAPA BAY is a special place, blessed with beautiful scenery and rich in natural resources. Those resources – particularly timber, fish, and shellfish – sustained native peoples for time immemorial, and the region’s settlers for the last 220 years. In recent years pressure on those resources has grown, and our understanding of what is sustainable has evolved. Since the downturn of the timber industry decades ago, communities along Willapa Bay have suffered..
In late 2021 the Port of Willapa Harbor hired the Center for Sustainable Infrastructure to facilitate a community-wide process to develop a new economic development vision, and a strategy with prioritized projects, for North Pacific County’s future.
In December 2021, an informal group of community leaders and advocates began meeting as a Steering Group to guide the process. They met every other week through the winter and early spring, conducted a two-day tour of projects, and made impressive progress in just a few months. The group, which eventually included 33 people representing 24 organizations, stepped up to the opportunity to reimagine a positive future for this struggling area.
This report captures the community’s values and principles, its vision, strategy and projects for renewal, CSI recommendations for moving the strategy forward, participants in the process, and a slide presentation of the “Reimagining the Willapa” vision and strategy.
Together, the Steering Group:
1. Identified community values and principles that would define success.
2. Envisioned an optimistic, sustainable, natural resource-based future
3. Developed and Prioritized projects for funding and implementation
VIEW THE SLIDESHOW
June 2022 version
Supporting an Innovative and Sustainable Natural Resource-based Economy
Willapa Bay leaders are advancing a vision of sustainable economic and community renewal, and multiple projects to realize that vision, built on these key strategies:
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Natural Resource Innovation Economy: bring innovation to natural resource challenges and opportunities to grow sustainable jobs for the long run.
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Resilient Infrastructure: design regional infrastructure for 21st-century realities and a changing landscape, to support sustainably thriving communities.
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Regional Recreation Network: take a regional view and weave together a network of recreational opportunities that draws visitors and connects them to the region’s working lands heritage and future.