Editor’s note: Originally published December 27, 2016. Republished May 26, 2022.

The signs are everywhere once you look for them, so commonplace they’re invisible. Log booms floating off Marine View Drive. A mural of Paul Bunyan in the Everett Station. Pine Street, Cedar Street, Alder Street. Houses built with hearty 100-year-old timber.   

Reminders of our former lumber-based economy are built into the bones of our city. It’s the reason we’re here. An eastward view from southbound I-5 tells the story in panorama: hills covered in evergreens, a river fat enough to float a tree trunk on.

Back in the day, we were a loyal mill town where Scott employees religiously boycotted Kleenex products. (Source 1)

Yet modern day Everett has almost no wood workers. Two large mills have closed since I moved here in 2008—Kimberly-Clark (now a 66 acre empty waterfront lot) and Smith Street. 

Casualties of the recession and a changing global market.

Lately I’ve been wondering: if a wood- and water-based economy is who we were, what are we now? If Everett’s existence, economy, and cultural identity were built on the mills— and the mills are gone— what will sustain us going forward?

Here are some ideas.

More skilled IT telecommuters, please.

Traditional unionized mill jobs aren’t coming back. Today’s college grads are entering a “gig economy” where more than 53 million Americans work as freelancers, according to Upwork. The percentage of independent workers—freelancers, contractors, and temps—is expected to reach 40% of the workforce by 2020. (Source 2)

2017 offers a job market where freelance jobs rule, especially in the tech-savvy Seattle Metro area where a laptop and coding skills are key elements of the hustle.

Many tech jobs can be worked remotely. Any place with cell phone reception and internet access will do as an improvised office. As Seattle home prices soar and I-5 thickens with traffic, the appeal of staying out of the fray will only increase. 

Young tech-savvy professionals also tend to generate culture through design, demand for nightlife, and (typically) higher wages than non-skilled workers.

To be clear, I’m not advocating for gentrification in Everett, but rather for attracting fresh job talent as cultural capital. Attract people creating culture, and local culture will work itself out in common spaces and collaborations. (Reasonable home prices are a great incentive for school broke millennials too.)

Historical buildings: remodel them and they will come.

Bellevue we ain’t. Most of our downtown structures aren’t glass high-rises, but literal brick and mortar buildings dating from a building boom in the 1920's. Let’s use our existing vintage infrastructure to our benefit. 

Many classy buildings downtown are partially vacant and are practically begging investors to buy them and flip them with McMenamin’s-style remodels. Everett is already the hub of nightlife in Snohomish County. Why not fatten the city coffers with a little weekend tourist cash?

Let’s create tax incentives and loans for investors looking to modify existing structures. 

New condos might be worth building, but let’s not forget that what we have in aces is something money can’t buy: time-worn charm.

Build smarter with less. Adapt resources to modern cultural narratives.

Smokestack City is a goner. Today’s local industries tend to be service-based: restaurants, bars, social work, and health care. These jobs are important, but it’s difficult to build a social narrative around them. (By contrast, consider the mythos of the three-fingered shingle weaver). 

Gone is our common theme of woodworking. 

Or is it?

Take the Everett furniture manufacturer Elpis & Wood— craftsmen who source lumber from the PNW and turn it into live edge slab wood tables. The Elpis crew works with arborists to re-purpose wood from trees that are being cut down anyway. This is a sensible use of local resources and a different approach than the cut-em-all-down approach of yesteryear. 

100 years ago, trees were treated like an unlimited resource. In 2017, the environmental restrictions around deforestation have put the squeeze on the timber and paper industry, all the way down to the mills.

Elpis & Wood use a minimal amount of wood, but fetch high prices for their handcrafted furniture. These are buzzwords today, but this is a sustainable local business. That’s good for our economy.

Canyon Lumber, an Everett sawmill on the Snohomish River, manufactures only certified green building products that adhere to standards set forth by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI). The SFI is an independent nonprofit dedicated to promoting sustainable forest management. 

Canyon is delivering a reliable supply of wood products from legal and responsible sources. In addition to this, customers are willing to pay more for responsibly-sourced wood.

It seems that what’s good for nearby forests is also good for today’s mills looking to capitalize on a growing demand for “green building.”

Our cultural narratives have already begun to reflect our maritime heritage (Fisherman’s Village Music Festival and Scuttlebutt Brewing). 

Could a sector of our local workforce return to the production of fine wooden American-made goods and buildings, creating additional monetary and artistic value out of our natural surroundings? 

Let’s keep up these Makers Markets, art walks, and farmers markets, ya’ll. 

2017

Often the best way to move forward is to look behind for inspiration. We are not rigidly bound to the past; we are informed by it. 

The above ideas are idealistic and nebulous—the practical application of these tenets is up to us, to work out as we see fit in all strata of the workforce and society. 

We need craftsmen and legislators and millworkers and artists and IT telecommuters and investors all working toward our common vision of Everett-ness. 

On the cusp of 2017, our city is ripe with potential. Our cultural identity is in our hands. 

We have water and wood. What shall we make?

Sources:
1 Smith, Debra. " Kimberly-Clark mill is part of the Everett we’ve lost." HeraldNet.com. Sound Publishing, 30 Mar. 2012. Web. 21 Dec. 2016.
2 Adamczyk, Alicia. "5 Trends Reshaping the U.S. Labor Market Today." Time.com. Time, 5 Sept. 2016. Web. 20 Dec. 2016.

Richard Porter writes for Live in Everett.