|
Open houses and public meetings are part of doing business for government agencies, but it’s not very common for land development companies. For Olympic Property Group (OPG), Kitsap County’s largest landowner, keeping an open dialogue with the public before and during a project is not surprising at all. OPG President Jon Rose says the company is focused on public relationships — as opposed to public relations — in every community where it does business.
“It is our business philosophy at OPG that every one of our big projects or programs has to have two strong elements: a very sound set of business fundamentals and a very sound set of social values,” he says.
For example, the company looks for ways to make a project more appealing to a community before launching it. “We create more good karma rather than controversy. It helps the community see we can be authentic partners in making the community better,” he said.
OPG’s Harbor Hill project in Gig Harbor North, now nearly completed, is one example of how this karma and public relationships may work. In a town where residents drove Wal-Mart out (and garnered national fame for it), big box chain stores didn’t necessarily get a welcome mat eight to 10 years ago. But instead of just bringing a Costco warehouse as an anchor for a variety of retail pads, OPG worked to entice the YMCA to choose its property (this after the YMCA had paid unrefundable earnest money on a nearby lot). The company subsidized the land sale, making a substantial donation as well as offering to develop a trail around what otherwise would be an unsightly retention pond. The retail development financed the addition of a 2 million-gallon water tank that will also serve the new hospital under construction and new homes in the area.
But Olympic Property Group didn’t stop there. It will soon submit a proposal to build a Little League field next to its existing field nearby and add more trails, expanding the concept of recreational amenities. When a local church approached the company about buying a parcel in Gig Harbor North, OPG wasn’t interested — unless the congregation would agree to build not a traditional church, but a performing arts center that could serve as a place of worship on the weekend and be available to the community for performances during the rest of the time. As part of the deal, OPG has requested a theater-like design on the site.
“Sometimes you take little elements we take for granted and turn them on their side, and you can find ways to make (a project) more valuable,” Rose says.
The approach is not strictly about good will. All the enhancements made to the area will ultimately benefit OPG’s future Gig Harbor North residential developments.
“Bringing in the Y was also very good for us — it wasn’t giving something away so ‘you can like me.’ We’ll sell more homes faster because of the cool things we’re putting there,” he says.
Olympic Property Group is a subsidiary of Pope Resources Inc., a publicly traded limited partnership that also includes Olympic Resources Management, a timber company. Pope Resources owns or manages nearly 560,000 acres of timberland and real estate in Washington and Oregon.
The company grew from a lumber mill business started in Port Gamble in 1853 years ago by William Talbot and Andrew Pope, who took advantage of the high demand for lumber in the San Francisco market. Puget Mill Co. (later renamed Pope and Talbot), thrived and evolved, and by the time the mill closed in 1995, it became the longest-operating mill in North America. Pope Resources (based in Poulsbo) still owns and operates Port Gamble, and in true Pope Resources fashion, it sought extensive community involvement when it decided, two years ago, to renovate the town and bring it even closer to its historic roots.
Other current OPG projects are Wright Creek in Bremerton, a 270-acre master planned community that includes a business park; Arborwood in Kingston that will include more than 500 acres of open spaces and parks; and the Skamania-Swift recreation area, among others.
What may be OPG’s most ambitious “public relationships” efforts is a project called the String of Pearls. It’s a concept to create a network of trails (walking, kayaking, equestrian etc) and open spaces in North Kitsap, connecting the various towns, that would require minimum public funding (mostly for maintenance and such). OPG took the lead in creating the North Kitsap Trails Association that will spearhead the effort to create the 50-mile-plus system of on-and off-road trails.
“What’s really important is that the public relationship is based on something authentic and it’s not just a glossy concept,” Rose says. “…Trails are the most requested and most utilized amenity in existing and proposed communities.”
Instead of trying to come up with trails on its own, OPG sought out partnerships. Rose says a meeting held in June 2007 brought out more than 500 people, and a group of about 50 people organized the association, which is seeking nonprofit status. So far, the group has logged more than 1,500 volunteer hours on the project.
Rose, who has a degree in civil engineering, joined OPG as a project manager in 1996 and became president in 2001. A Bainbridge Island musician who recently released two albums of original blues/swing/funk/R&B music, he said the company’s strength is developing really good master plans.
“These are really big canvasses and we have really big paint brushes,” he says. He recalls an early lesson, as a child, from his clarinet teacher who said playing improvised music means “you don’t have to play someone else’s music.” In a way, his role as president at OPG follows that advice, combining the right and left sides of his brain in a sort of a harmonious, improvised performance.
Rose says the company has evolved through the years, and the new company CEO, David Nunez, fosters a progressive environment. “I have a really good parent company that’s just as progressive on the timber side and staff that’s absolutely creative and passionate about this work,” he says. “We’re very good at developing master projects and developing active partnerships.”
Olympic Property Group can be reached through its parent company, Pope Resources, at 360-697-6626 or by visiting their website at www.orm.com.
|
