Developers Remove BAR Holdings/Salish Landing from the County Docket

In March 2026, community members were asked to tell Thurston County whether BAR Holdings/Salish Landing should remain on the County’s docket — the list of projects the County plans to work on over the next two years. The response was overwhelming: nearly all of the 183 survey respondents opposed keeping the proposal on the docket.

Before the County was required to take a position, the developers requested that BAR Holdings be removed from the docket. The most likely reason they did so was the failure of Senator Jessica Bateman’s UGA swap bill, which would have weakened water protections and anti-sprawl provisions of the Growth Management Act. She sponsored the bill by request of the BAR Holdings developers, and it is probable that their attorney, Heather Burgess, drafted the bill for the senator.

Senator Bateman informed community members in November 2025 that she was working on a bill to get BAR Holdings approved. But during the bill hearing in January 2026, the senate committee chair essentially asked her if the bill was for a specific development in her district, and she claimed it was merely a statewide "technical fix". Immediately after that, Rob Rice (one of the BAR Holdings developers) testified in favor of the bill by touting the benefits of the BAR Holdings proposed development.

After the bill failed to make it out of the Rules Committee in the Senate, and after the companion bill in the House failed to advance, the developers asked the county to remove BAR Holdings from the county docket. This is a meaningful, though likely temporary, development. Removing the proposal from the docket reduces the immediate risk of the project moving forward. However, the broader issue remains unresolved. Similar legislation could be introduced in future sessions to create loopholes for UGA swaps that expand development capacity or weaken protections for aquifers, farmland, forestland, and surface waters.

Thank you to everyone who spoke out in opposition to the docket item and to sprawling development that would convert valuable rural lands.