Bay Wood

A project that cleaned up a once-challenged shoreline and restored habitat at the Port of Everett’s former Bay Wood property culminated with the opening of a new nature trail.

The half-mile Bay Wood Nature Trail provides public access to the former waterfront mill site for the first time in its history. The trail offers an extension to the City of Everett’s Mill Town Trail and features viewpoints that overlook the mouth of the Snohomish River and Port Gardner Bay.

The shoreline project, a partnership with the Washington State Department of Ecology, removed about 3,500 cubic yards of contaminated soil from legacy uses, created 1,300 linear feet (LF) of new living shoreline habitat, and added another 2,200 LF of upland buffer habitat with plantings to restore nearshore habitat for salmon and other native wildlife.

These efforts to clean up the Bay Wood property, located west of Legion Memorial Park on West Marine View Drive, spurred the property sale and private development of a nearly $30 million employment complex by Latitude Development that is returning jobs to the site for the first time in nearly 30 years.

OnTrac, a regional logistics company, has been announced as the building tenant and is expected to support up to 400 on-site jobs and another 1,000+ off-site jobs. This new economic activity is estimated to generate $330,000 a year in state and local taxes.

The new ADA-compliant, 8-foot-wide nature trail was a condition of the Port’s sale and future development of the property. A few visitor parking spaces will be available to trail users on the water side of the building once the Baywood Business Park it circumnavigates opens. (In the meantime, nearby public parking is available in the City’s parklets along West Marine View Drive, at the Port’s Waterfront Place or even up at Legion Memorial Park.)

In 2022, the Port of Everett was recognized with the Environmental Stewardship Award from the Washington Public Ports Association for the recently completed Bay Wood Shoreline Restoration and Cleanup project.