Trillium not only waged battles with environmentalists, it naively denounced the media for showing up to cover them. Anytime you are creating change, you upset a lot of people. The double black eye Trillium sustained has haunted the company ever since. Later Whatcom County projects with much less impact had their share of critics and opponents. Though Syre and his company have numerous friends in the county, and throughout the world, a negative cachet seems to follow the Trillium name.
Efforts are under way to change that.
In an attempt to be more accommodating to the media, the company's first public-relations manager was hired late last year. More significantly, Trillium is trying to rebuild its image as an environmentally friendly company by developing stricter policies and by donating portions of its wealth to programs such as Washington State University's Sustainable Program and Institute. The company's statewide visibility is likely to increase when it opens a downtown Seattle office in April. Syre will have an office there, and CEO Erik Anderson, who lives in Medina, is likely to spend much of his time there. Seattle-based Phillips Real Estate Services Inc. Trillium's headquarters will remain in Bellingham, but its accounting and some other core activities will move south.