City Profiles / Small Cities / Bellingham, WA

Bellingham, Washington

Situated on Bellingham Bay at the northern end of the Puget Sound, Bellingham is both a university town and an industrial center, home to an aging pulp mill owned until 2001 by Georgia Pacific and other facilities that required waterfront access. Over the last 20 years, however, Bellingham has transformed itself from a manufacturing port to a post-industrial city, while updating some of its industrial facilities and remediating others, including the brownfield sites at the pulp mill.

The city is well served by transportation options, including an Amtrak train from nearby Vancouver to Seattle and points farther south and a ferry to Alaska. It is home to a large number of parks and provides easy access to nearby mountains and boating, celebrated in the city's annual Ski-to-Sea race, an 89-mile relay race combining cross-country and downhill skiing, running, bicycling and mountain bike riding, canoeing and kayaking. Even for the less athletic, the mild weather makes for year-round outdoors activities (assuming you don't mind the rain).

The city has also been recognized by the EPA Green Power Communities program for drawing 11 percent of its total electricity usage from renewable sources, putting it in second place among the most successful cities in the program. And in May 2008 ICLEI honored Bellingham for its climate action plan. A network of green businesses in town find their forum in Sustainable Connections, established in 2002 to educate business owners in sustainable practices, connect them to one another and market their efforts. Sustainable Connection has since become the model for green business networks across the country.