PORT ANGELES — The Port Angeles City Council has approved the purchase of a prefabricated steel building to replace the parks maintenance shop that was destroyed in a December windstorm.
Council members voted 7-0 Tuesday to authorize the $160,436 purchase of a 6,000-square-foot General Steel building that will be assembled at Lincoln Park after the badly damaged shop is demolished.
“The new building will allow the parks maintenance crew to go from an outdated and overcrowded 1970s 2,000-square-foot building to a much larger building,” Port Angeles Senior Center Manager Aubry Bright told the City Council on Tuesday.
“This will allow the crew to centralize all of their equipment and keep most of their equipment inside during the harsher weather times. It also gives them an option to expand.”
The city purchased the metal building from Platypus Marine Inc. of Port Angeles.
Platypus owner and President Judson Linnabary agreed to sell the metal building for 50 cents on the dollar after the Port Angeles shipyard secured more office space at the former Sunset Do It Best Hardware building on Marine Drive in February.
“It’s a great deal to pick this up,” Council Member Michael Merideth said at the Tuesday meeting.
“That’s a lot of building right there.”
The existing parks maintenance building at 1310 W. Lincoln St. was destroyed by a large fir tree that fell during a historic windstorm last Dec. 14.
The building was unoccupied when the tree crashed through the roof and destroyed the framework, missing an electrical substation by about 20 feet.
“Thankfully no one was injured in the incident, but the staff was forced to store equipment and vehicles at various city facilities with no place to go,” Bright said.
The General Steel building will be stored on a Port of Port Angeles-owned property near William R. Fairchild Memorial Airport until the old building is demolished.
An insurance claim will cover $123,097 of the cost of the new building. The remaining $37,339 will be taken out of general fund reserves.
Merideth expressed concern over the costs of demolition and permitting for the new building.
City Manager Nathan West said the city is eligible for additional Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding for windstorm damage.
“In this scenario, you are far more likely to be in the smaller hundreds of thousands of dollars as opposed to the millions if we were starting from scratch,” West said.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56450, or at rollikainen@peninsula dailynews.com.
