By MARK MOREY and TIM KELLY
Yakima Herald-Republic
January 10, 2009
YAKIMA, Wash. -- To the displeasure of neighbors, a federal facility to hold immigration detainees is being proposed for a Yakima industrial area.
A 4.3-acre site at the end of Presson Place is proposed for a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office complex that could include two guardhouses and cells for federal detainees.
The plan, which is under review by the city of Yakima, could result in immigration detainees there within two years.
"I call it a prison," said Neill Hauff, whose company makes wind machines and orchard sprayers and has been located on Presson Place since 1996.
ICE spokeswoman Lorie Dankers describes it instead as an office building and temporary holding facility for detainees.
"There's no capacity or interest in holding anyone there for any period of time," she said this week.
Presson Place is a private dead-end street that runs about a quarter-mile north from Washington Avenue, a short distance east of the main Yakima post office.
A city notice sent to Presson Place property owners said the facility would see 41 people either "reside or work" at the nearly 24,000-square-foot facility, which would have 135 parking spaces. The center would roughly equal the size of the Catholic Credit Union building at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Martin Luther King Boulevard.
ICE does not disclose current employment numbers for a specific location, and Dankers would not speculate on whether local jobs might be added to support the new office building.
The now vacant property is between HF Hauff Co. and the Carpenters Training Center, and Hauff doesn't think it's a suitable location for an ICE facility.
Hauff said his primary concern is increased traffic.
He pointed out that the plan calls for putting bus shelters on both sides of Washington Avenue by Presson Place, and for installing sidewalks along the street, which is regularly used by trucks loading and unloading at his business and others on the street.
"This would be a huge impact on us in here," agreed Shane May, plant manager at Wrap Pack, which is across the street from Hauff. The
company manufactures tissue for wrapping produce and wine bottles.
Spokesman Ross Buffington from the General Services Administration in Seattle, which manages federal property, said his agency has been seeking space for ICE in the Yakima area for several years.
The first effort, on Ahtanum Ridge Road in Union Gap, fell apart when the Texas contractor encountered financial difficulties, forcing GSA to terminate the lease contract in 2007.
GSA is now again soliciting bids for a building to lease.
The land-use application for the proposed facility was submitted to the city by Jundt-Eglin LLC, which owns the Presson Place property and whose corporate officers are Jake Jundt, who was a key player in the construction of Yakima County's jail by the fairgrounds, and Charlie Eglin, owner of Tri-Ply Construction in Yakima.
Hauff and May worry that the ICE center would bring vehicle traffic and pedestrians to the industrial street, where big trucks are regularly pulling in, turning around and sometimes idling in the street while waiting for an open loading ramp.
Hauff also expressed concern about locating a detention facility next to the Carpenters Training Center, where high school students come for a construction technology program.
The only residential area nearby is the Broadmoor Senior Citizen Park, to the west between Presson Place and the post office.
Hauff said other locations in Yakima are more suitable for an ICE detention center, suggesting the Ahtanum View correctional facility on 64th Avenue that the state is planning to close, the county jail complex next to State Fair Park, or land near the county landfill in Terrace Heights.
Buffington said the building would include four holding cells, two large and two small. Dankers did not disclose their capacity.
Holding cells are typically designed for short-term confinement of prisoners during investigative interviews, for example. ICE holds longer-term immigration detainees at local jails before they are taken to the agency's regional detention center in Tacoma for deportation hearings.
The permit application states that ICE wants to be able to bring vans, buses and semi tractors onto the site for transporting detainees.
Under the current GSA proposal, two ICE operations would move to the new location from their current space in Yakima -- the Office of Investigations, now at the Chinook Tower in downtown Yakima, and the Office of Detention and Removal Operations on River Road.
ICE is responsible for a wide range of immigration, customs and domestic security duties.
Dankers said ICE already has temporary detention space available in Yakima.
Although she did not confirm whether a Jundt-Eglin site plan drawing matches the intended final facility, she said that improvements would be meant to improve security for both officers and detainees.
She said the agency functions within its current locations, but a move would be consistent with a continuing effort to bring immigrations and customs functions under one roof wherever possible.
Dankers discounted the idea that a move to a more secure facility might foretell an increase in workplace raids or similar enforcement activities.
"I wouldn't draw any conclusions based on that. I don't think there's any basis for that," she said.
Because the Yakima facility would not be a full-time jail -- detainees would stay less than 24 hours, according to the Jundt-Eglin application -- it does not require a public hearing to be located there, assistant city planner Christine Wilson said.
The city has recommended changes to ensure that the project meets environmental standards and is compatible with surrounding property uses. Those include a dust control plan, installation of sidewalks from Presson Place to Washington Avenue and erecting two bus stops on both sides of Washington Avenue.
If no appeals are filed, building permits could be issued as soon as mid-February.
Jundt-Eglin's permit application states the property would be sold to I.G. Management, a La Jolla, Calif., company.
Messages left this week for Eglin and I.G. representative Glenn Dugan were not returned.
City planners said they have mailed notices to the fewer than two dozen property owners within 500 feet of the proposed federal office.
http://www.yakima-herald.com/stories/2010/01/08/01-09-10-ice-building
