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5/5/2015
Questions for: Gene Duvernoy, president, Forterra (formerly Cascade Land Conservancy) ­ Puget Sound Business Journal
Questions for: Gene Duvernoy, president,
Forterra (formerly Cascade Land
Conservancy)
SUBSCRIBER CONTENT: Dec 2, 2011, 3:00am PST
More than 20
years since it
began,
Washington’s
largest land
conservation
Save Order
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BUSINESS JOURNAL PHOTO | Anthony Bolante
Gene Duvernoy
Bethany Overland
organization, Cascade Land Conservancy,
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5/5/2015
Questions for: Gene Duvernoy, president, Forterra (formerly Cascade Land Conservancy) ­ Puget Sound Business Journal
recently changed its name to Forterra. The
Puget Sound Business Journal sat down with Forterra’s president, Gene Duvernoy, to talk
about the nonprofit’s new name and why Forterra might be coming to a city — not forest or
farmland — near you.
Why the name change? Cascade Land Conservancy recently changed its name to
Forterra. We’ve been around for about 20 years, and for much of that history we were the
Cascade Land Conservancy; it has served us extraordinarily well. We’ve conserved
175,000 acres of land, we’ve created what you call the Cascade Agenda and the Olympic
Agenda, but it became increasingly apparent we needed to change our name.
How so? There were a few reasons. First, geography: Our geography is way beyond the
Cascades. One of our leading projects currently is the Port Gamble project on the (Olympic)
Peninsula. We are deeply engaged in conserving the Yakima Canyon, on the Yakima River,
so we’re way beyond the Cascades. Geographically, as much as I loved it, “Cascade Land
Conservancy” became a little constricting.
Second, through our work it became increasingly apparent that if we want to make a
sustainable region — if you want to save the woods — you need to make great cities.
Places people relish living in. So “land conservancy” doesn’t sound like something that’s
operating in the cities. So we had to signal that we’re invested in the cities.
The third reason is, if you step back and look at our economy and our region’s environment
— and you’ll gather this from my other two points — we need to teach people how to live
well in our cities and leave the rest of the region for recreation, timber flow, and food flow.
Stop these same old battles of environmentalist vs. developers vs. timber operators and
find a new way to work. We’ve been charting that for years: How do you find the way for all
parties to work together? The name change is to strongly indicate that this is a point in time
where we need to come together as a region in terms of our economics, in terms of our
environment, in terms of our built communities.
Why the name ‘Forterra’? It means we’re for the earth. And when you look at our logo, the
“e” also doubles as an ampersand — it allows us to carry through and express different
notions. (The branding firm) Hornall Anderson helped with the name change. They said,
“You can’t afford us, so we’ll do it for free.” It was great.
On Forterra’s partnership with the University of Washington: We’re starting a really
interesting project with the College of Built Environments, at the University of Washington,
and the School of Public Health. We’re exploring how to enhance our public health by
enhancing what we’re putting in our built environments. How do you incentivize that kind of
development? We have a very interesting project that we call the Cascade Agenda cities
project. Nineteen cities are engaged in that, about 1.4 million people in those cities, and our
policy staff meets with policy folks within those cities to talk about how we build complete,
compact and connected cities — cities folks want to live in.
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5/5/2015
Questions for: Gene Duvernoy, president, Forterra (formerly Cascade Land Conservancy) ­ Puget Sound Business Journal
What are some of the challenges Forterra faces in this project? Here are some of our
biggest environmental problems — and it’s really going to surprise you: schools systems,
affordable housing, and good transit. Totally unrecognized as environmental issues. But
look at it this way: If we’re really going to learn to live sustainably, we need to learn how to
live within the cities we’ve built for ourselves. What does that mean? We need to afford to
live in them, we need to get our kids smart and educated in them, and we need to be able
to get around in them. And we also have our Green Cities Program — restoring parks,
about 4,000 acres of parks in five different cities, so they are more accessible to
neighborhoods and public.
Forterra does a lot of policy work with cities and counties in Washington state: A recent
example is the Orton Junction, near Sumner. This was passed by Pierce County two weeks
ago. There was a lot of controversy around it; the project included a lot of farmland. So we
said, let’s find a new way of doing it. So we structured an agreement that as the developer
develops that landscape, the City of Sumner was going to decrease the size of their city
boundaries to compensate for that increase. Moreover, for every acre of land that
developer develops, they’ll permanently preserve five acres of other farmland (in a
designated valley in Pierce County near that site). Finally, as the developer develops that
site, it’s a walkable, compacted community and is also required to have farmer market
outlets. So, a local market for increased economy — the point being to align economic,
environmental and city interests so that everyone gets what they need rather than spend all
this time fighting.
Forterra is a nonprofit — does most of its money come from private donations?We’re
not a big organization; our balance sheet is about $35 million. We have 55 employees.
They’re mostly in this office, but we have four other offices (Everett, Tacoma, Ellensburg
and one on the Olympic Peninsula).
We try to diversify (with how we fund our operation). There are revenue expectations in
every department. We try to run this place like a business, where our product is great
community and conserved landscapes. Roughly speaking, about one­third of our revenue is
philanthropic, one­third of our revenue are contracts with other government or private
sector folks, and about one­third of our revenue is risk capital and joint development
conservation projects or other real estate work.
Where’s the money in risk capital ventures for Forterra? Just an example, (in 2003) we
completed what we call the Patterson Creek Reserve (or Treemont). Patterson Creek was a
250­acre property right on an urban­rural (King County) line owned by Port Blakely. They’d
been trying to permit it for about 200 houses for years and years. Under the GMA (Growth
Management Act) it was only allowed to have maybe 60 houses. So there was a real
disconnect there, and it was looking like a legal battle between King County and Port
Blakely. So we bought the property from Port Blakely and said we’ll buy it as if it’s permitted
for 200 homes. Then we sold the conservation easement to King County so they knew they
had good public access on the site and limited its development forever. We then took the
remaining site and worked with a developer… We entitled the site (in 2005) for 30 homes,
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5/5/2015
Questions for: Gene Duvernoy, president, Forterra (formerly Cascade Land Conservancy) ­ Puget Sound Business Journal
on about half the site, constructed under very specific environmental standards, then
conserved the rest. We did it in such a way that our costs were much less than Port
Blakely’s cost, then sold the rest to some other developers to recoup our initial investment.
We made hundreds of thousands of dollars, some which went into perpetual endowment,
and the remainder went into our operating budget.
—Interview conducted and condensed by Bethany Overland
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