(2015 photo of Terminal 5 by Long Bach Nguyen)

As previewed here Monday, Seattle and Tacoma port commissioners – meeting as the Northwest Seaport Alliance‘s managing members – voted Tuesday on soliciting bids for the Terminal 5 modernization project. They voted to authorize staff to proceed with that, and are now moving toward a March 19th vote on leases for T-5, following a briefing back on February 5th. Video from this week’s meeting is viewable here, where you’ll also find documents from the meeting. If the bidding process for the $340 million project proceeds as planned, work could start as soon as June. Before then, if its lease is finalized, Matson will move its operations to T-5 starting in April. According to Tuesday’s briefing, while SSA‘s lease as the long-term tenant of T-5 also would start in April, its rent payments wouldn’t start until 2021 – assuming Phase 1 of the modernization project is done by then.

P.S. If you see this before 6:30 pm, a reminder that a port rep is on the agenda at tonight’s West Seattle Transportation Commission meeting to talk about T-5. The meeting’s at Neighborhood House-High Point, 6400 Sylvan Way SW.