Port Angeles waterfront property up for sale -- again
Dan Gase, president of Coldwell Banker Uptown Realty, stands at the Oak Street waterfront property in Port Angeles on Thursday. -- Photo by Chris Tucker/Peninsula Daily News
By Tom Callis, Peninsula Daily News
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It's now listed for sale at $1.6 million — about twice as much as owner Harry Dorssers paid for it in 2006.
Though a preliminary contract was signed, Dorssers said the prospective buyers of all or part of the lot could not come up with the financing by a Aug. 15 deadline.
Dorssers, owner of Monte Mare LLC, said he blamed the economy.
"Nobody has any money at the moment," he said from his cell phone in Monaco on Wednesday.
Neither Dorssers, nor his real estate agent, Dan Gase, would comment on who the prospective buyer was, or what they had in mind for the property.
Hotel owner and manager Lincoln Asset Management of Portland, Ore. was named as the prospective buyer in a Port of Port Angeles commissioners meeting in July.
Lincoln Asset Management owns and manages hotels such as Comfort Inns and Suites, Best Western, Holiday Inn Express and others.
Dorssers originally considered building an aquatic center on the property.
Then, he planned to build a $30 million condominium development before deciding to sell all or part of the land for what port officials said would be a hotel.
Now, Dorssers says he is not sure what he is going to do with the site other than list it for sale.
"Right now, I am sitting on it," he said earlier this week.
"I'm sure in one or two years, something will change."
Dorssers said he priced the lot in hopes of recouping time and money spent on different designs and prospects for the property over the last three years.
The port sold the property to Dorssers for $797,113.19 in September 2006.
"If I have to sell it for $800,000, that would be a huge loss," he said.
Earlier plans
Gase, Coldwell Banker Uptown Realty president, said Dorssers had planned to construct 75 condo units and 10,000 square feet of retail space on the property.
The project fell through in June because Dorssers said he couldn't get the needed financing.
Dorssers said he needed to come up with $12 million for the project.
"I needed investors," he said.
"I'm not that rich."
Gase said banks see condo projects as risky, and typically require at least 50 percent of them to be pre-sold before they provide financing for a project.
About 45 people were on the waiting list, but not enough of them could purchase the condos at the time, he said.
The project — which in 2007 was estimated at $30 million, and included underground parking and over 100 condo units — was scaled down earlier this year.
Dorssers and Treadwell Jones of Concept Dorssers in the Seattle area had originally proposed building a European-style aquatic center on the property in 2005.
Gase said Dorssers had a successful career building aquatic centers in Europe.
He designed more than 80 aquatic centers that included slides and wave machines, Gase said.
Dorssers said he acquired the property with the initial intent of creating a European-style aquatic center to replace the William Shore Memorial Pool, operated by the city.
That project fell through when voters defeated a $13.8 million aquatic center bond in November 2006 to replace the pool.
20-year effort
The sale of the property culminated a 20-year effort by the city to move the harbor line so that the property sat in a commercial area rather than an industrial one, and a land swap with the state Department of Natural Resources.
Port Commissioner John Calhoun has said the port sold the property because a commercial use is not in line with the port's core mission of assisting industrial economic development.
The property had previously been a log yard.
Previous proposals for the property had included a motel, medical complex — and a hotel with a convention center in 2003-4.
Each of the projects fell through due to a lack of investors.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
Last modified: September 18. 2008 9:00PM