Remembering Sunmar

Taxpayers will remember the excitement port commissioners generated when they announced that Sunmar Container Lines was going to do business out of the Budd Inlet marine terminal. That was back in 1997.

As with the Weyerhaeuser deal, commissioners promised the creation of dozens of jobs with ships of containerized cargo leaving the port every three weeks.

Port commissioners borrowed $6.5 million to make dockside improvements to accommodate the new shipping company. They purchased two cranes from Los Angeles and had them shipped to Olympia via barge.

The berth improvements were made, the cranes were erected and Sunmar started shipping general cargo across the port docks.

After just one year, Sunmar pulled out of Olympia, sticking taxpayers with a decade of debt that, at the time, amounted to $768,700 a year.

The port's lease with Sunmar -- negotiated and signed in secret -- allowed the Seattle-based shipping company to get out of the lease without penalty if there were a downturn in the Russian economy.

It was a faulty lease that port officials never should have agreed to. The community was rightfully outraged over the investment of tax dollars and Sunmar's hasty departure.

The two cranes seldom are used today. That's not likely to change with the Weyerhaeuser deal. Cranes could be used to load lumber, but Weyerhaeuser plans to ship logs -- not lumber.