Check out Rachel Pritchett’s Kitsap Business blog to see what Cary Bozeman had to say about Kitsap SEED, among other things. Granted, he works at the behest of the commissioners, but they had to know what he was thinking before they hired him.

The Kitsap County Association of Realtors’ Board of Directors is planning to draft a letter asking the Port of Bremerton to at least temporarily cease spending money on the Kitsap Sustainable Energy and Economic Development project.

Mike Eliason, association executive, said the statement will not so much be against the overall project as much as it is a statement about the economy and the number of vacancies in the county.

Eliason said commercial vacancies are above 10 percent and industrial properties seeing vacancies even higher. Adding more industrial property, he said, could harm the overall market.

Kitsap SEED is designed to be a business park for clean technology companies. The first phase is to include an incubator for start-up clean-tech businesses.

Bill Mahan, port commissioner, said the incubator building would not compete with traditional commercial real estate, because it’s “designed for businesses moving from garages to the next stage of development.”

No, I haven’t heard more about tonight’s meeting. I have, however, spoken with Noah Israel of Godstream Technologies and Jonathan Hampton of Ceramic Cement Research Institute Inc. of Arkansas.

Israel’s letter of intent is there as kind of a placeholder, holding room for the companies interested in coming to Kitsap County.

One of those is Ceramic Cement Research Institute. Jonathan Hampton said he worked years in the construction field with cement, raised his 10 kids on it. His facility serves a couple functions. One is to do research on mineral-based cement that takes far less energy to make and can be stronger than traditional cement used. Traditional cement, which he referred to as “Portland Cement” needs dehydrating at temperatures up to 2,700 degrees to make, so cement is one of the big contributors to CO2 emissions. He also teaches contractors how to use the more eco-friendly cement, using his Arkansas lab to do it.

He wants to come to Kitsap for a few reasons. One, he grew up in Alaska and doesn’t like living where he does. He spent about five years in Port Townsend. It’s not Alaska, he says, but it’s a nice compromise between that and where he is. Second, he would be coming because of the stated goal of Kitsap SEED, to help lead work into new greener technologies.

The port has another letter of intent, which I’ve yet to see, but has been characterized three times for me, as an $8 million commitment from a private partner of a Las Vegas company that wants to build a new type of wall board in Kitsap County. Hampton described it as a replacement for sheetrock. It costs twice as much, but retains room temperatures for hours, where sheet rock will give way to outside temps in about 10 minutes. He estimates the new wall board saves 40 percent in energy over traditional boards. That company wants to locate at the port, and a New Zealand financier is putting up $8 million to tool the facility and make it ready to go.

Godstream’s Noah Israel said the development project that the hearing examiner denied “with prejudice” has had that last phrase removed and her decision is being appealed before the county council. The argument he’s making is that the hearing examiner used the same pattern in denying his application that she did in doing so to another application, a decision the county council overturned. Specifically, she was applying engineering standards she would have no knowledge of and apparently no business using. Israel said in the past it was his company that converted the trees to finished product for the siding, flooring and moulding at Islandwood.

His particular interest in SEED heightened when he had the setback with the community development he was proposing for Arlington went south along with the housing market. He’s been developing these relationships with like-minded companies in other products. Hampton said he and Israel met about a year ago at Washington State University, where Hampton was speaking on ceramic cement at a conference.

WSU is Hampton’s preferred testing facility.

I’ll blog live from the meeting.

In the mid 1930s my dad’s older brothers had gone to a movie in downtown Denver and were walking around the area afterward. From the alley they heard a man swearing about FDR and Benjamin F. Stapleton, who had recently regained his mayor job after four years away. My uncles went into the alley to see who the man yelling was, and it turned out to be their own father.

Blaine Elmer Gardner had worked for the city of Denver in an inspector role on the highways. He’d blow a whistle and the big trucks would have to stop. He took my dad, who was no older than 4, to work with him from time to time and let him blow the whistle. Dad got a kick out of having these adults obeying his command and later became a police officer, which probably wasn’t as fun.
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Well, that didn’t go well, did it. My laptop wouldn’t let me connect to the Internet, so I couldn’t live blog. Better there than at something really critical.

The two meetings were very well attended, about 100 total when you don’t include port staff and reporters. Larry Stokes said he wants a vote on it. Most of those who commented on that favored it, though one audience member said it is the commissioners’ job to make that decision.

From my perspective the crowd was a pretty even mix of those in favor and those opposed, as well as a few undecideds. There were some good questions from all three camps and a couple of arguments. Go to the link above. There’s a short video for a little flavor.

Carrying on from the previous post about the clean-tech conference in California, I have looked a little more into these types of events and it is true that they are frequent. Perhaps they are as the author of this piece in Grist characterized it, “a dime a dozen these days.”

He was referring to the Renewable Energy Finance Forum West that took place in the last week in October in Seattle.

As RV mentioned in the previous post, the Puget Sound Business Journal will host the Green Business Summit on Nov. 12. The agenda looks to me to be about businesses implementing green strategies.

My interest in the Bay Area clean-tech event was that it was about the money. While the port can lay the table and market the site, it will be private investors, most likely, that would make a site like Kitsap SEED successful or prove that it’s not a good fit for the area. And those private investors, whose primary interest still appears to be about return, are taking an enthusiastic look at clean technology.

This actually has application in how we cover the port. When I was hired in Vancouver I was assigned as part of my beat the Port of Vancouver. I was a business reporter. Looking back, that’s a statement by the paper that it places higher deference to the port’s role in driving economic development than its role as a government body. Traditionally we have assigned Port of Bremerton coverage based on who had the city of Bremerton as a beat. That changed when my role changed, because Andy Binion was also covering cops in addition to his Bremerton coverage. In this job, I’m more a government guy.

That isn’t to say we don’t recognize the port’s role in economic development. What we’re considering, however, is following the model Vancouver set in assigning a business reporter to the topic instead of a government reporter. Education reporters cover school boards. Environmental reporters can go to any of the local governments when the issue is land use.

The port in the middle of government wrangling right now when it comes to SEED. But the economic development question is what provides the context behind whatever answer the elected port commissioners choose. Should the port continue to be my beat, that’s something I will work to make clear. Should it end up going to a business reporter, that’s a new angle to start from.

This is why Kitsap SEED has never been an “If you build it, he will come” scenario. The Berk study indicates it’s more like like, “If you build it and champion it, they might come.” What business venture isn’t like that?

On Wednesday the Port of Bremerton will hold a town hall meeting about the Kitsap Sustainable Energy and Economic Development project. The commissioners and staff will make presentations, providing some history and context and looks into the future. Next would come time for residents to speak and ask questions.

Speaking of clean-tech, I heard about this next thing from a Facebook friend. (I’m not into networking, really, but if I can do it online without actually ever talking to someone, neato!) If you’ve got $1,500 to spend, a yammerin’ to go to San Francisco and a genuine interest in clean technology and where to invest your money in the industry, you may want to go to the Gerson Lehrman Group Clean Tech Summit. It’s a two-day forum on where the money will be in clean-technology. The information on the site indicates there will be 20 sessions focusing on investment into different clean technologies.

Who will attend, you ask? Why, the site tells you:

An expected audience of more than 200 executives will represent clean technology ventures, active clean technology investors, government and near-governmental entities, and others.

Together, we’ll discuss:

• Winners and losers in key sectors and industries;
• Hot technologies and promising innovations;
• Investment strategies and patterns, sector by sector, in venture capital, private equity, and M&A;
• Best practices in managing clean technology innovation;
• Regulatory obstacles and governmental support.

Who will not attend, you ask?

• Me.

Believe me, this isn’t the time to be asking my bosses to send me to San Francisco in less than two weeks. They might have approved that, oh, eight years ago.

What I really wonder is if anyone from the port is going. I’ve sent inquiries. It’s cheaper than another study.

The town hall meetings will be at 3:30 p.m. and 7 p.m., Wednesday at the Comfort Inn at 5640 Kitsap Way in Bremerton. The next evening, 7 p.m., there is a budget hearing at the airport.