By Laura Furr Mericas

Later this year, if all goes as planned, the Town of Darrington will break ground on a first-of-its-kind manufacturing and research facility focused on the emerging technology of mass timber. The Darrington Wood Innovation Center, which will employ 150, is an exercise in collaborative leadership seven years in the making, born out of economic necessity, promise, and tragedy.

Having lost 90 percent of its timber jobs in the decades-long collapse of that industry, Darrington already was struggling to survive when in 2014 a mudslide buried 47 homes near the neighboring community of Oso and severed SR 530, Darrington’s primary link to population centers and jobs. Not long after the slide, Darrington Mayor Dan Rankin and Snohomish County Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries Coordinator Linda Neunzig attended a statewide conference exploring the potential of how mass timber—engineered wood products touted as low-carbon alternatives to concrete and steel—might revitalize the economies of rural, forest product towns in an era of climate change.

The opportunity seemed tailor-made to Darrington’s predicament. “We are completely surrounded by national forests and the timber and logging industry,” Rankin says. “We wanted something that fit our community as a whole, not only for jobs.”

So the duo, both Snohomish County natives, began forming relationships with leaders across the state. While Rankin and Neunzig worked with local and regional leaders to devise a mass timber economic revitalization plan for Darrington, the town’s congressional delegation—Sen. Maria Cantwell and Rep. Suzan DelBene— worked together in Washington, DC, to secure federal economic relief funding in the aftermath of the mudslide.

We are completely surrounded by national forests and the timber and logging industry. We wanted something that fit our community as a whole, not only for jobs.

With a $6 million grant from the US Economic Development Administration (which helped secure a $2 million award from the state’s Community Economic Revitalization Board), the town is now moving forward with plans to transform a former 93-acre tree farm into the Darrington Wood Innovation Center. The campus will be built out in phases, starting with a private cross-laminated timber production facility and a mass timber modular manufacturer followed by a sustainable forest products research and education center, with 30 acres of forestland held in trust in perpetuity for recreation and education (thanks to a $157,000 grant from the Snohomish County Conservation Futures program).

For Darrington, where roughly half of the 1,400 residents commute up to 70 miles each way to find what he calls “meaningful work,” Rankin expects the development will be transformative, creating dozens of local family-wage jobs, spurring private investment, and providing an elusive commodity: hope.

“For a small town like ours, this is a huge moment,” says Rankin, a sawmill operator who has been Darrrington’s mayor since 2012. “For the folks that live here, the kids that are coming out of high school here, the kids that have gone on to college and soon will be able to return here and have opportunities—these are the things that make a town whole.”

For more information: townofdarrington.com