Price tag $45 million for Port Angeles Waterfront Center

PORT ANGELES — The Port Angeles Waterfront Center finally has a price tag: $45 million.

“I’ve been asked repeatedly over the last 2½ years that I’ve been doing this, how much is this going to cost,” said Brooke Taylor, Waterfront Center board chairman, said last week.

He was speaking to a packed Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce business luncheon crowd at the Port Angeles Red Lion Hotel.

“We have a budget for the entire project of about $45 million,” Taylor told about 80 members of the business community and guests at the Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce get-together Wednesday.

“That’s a lot of money,” Taylor allowed.

“That’s one of the biggest projects in the history of the county, and it’s going to happen,” Taylor said.

“We’re already over 50 percent there, well over.

“It’s going to be a big lift,” he allowed. “I don’t think there’s ever been a better opportunity to invest in your community.

“This is a doable amount of money. We are just getting started.”

The 40,000-square-foot, minimum 45-foot-tall Waterfront Center will include an events-conference center with seating for 300 dinner banquet participants, a coffee shop, and a 1,000-square-foot art gallery, Taylor said.

The two-story building will include a 500-seat “state-of-the-art” performance hall, a box office, and an administrative office.

It will be built at the corner of West Front and North Oak streets where Black Ball Ferry Line parking is located. The lot will be eliminated for the project.

Located on a 1.6-acre parcel overlooking the waterfront, the center will sit on 181 pile-driven pilings, each 40 feet long.

Costs for the project have grown from initial estimates of $15 million-$20 million that were guesses more than two years ago, Taylor said.

That was before before organizers decided on a larger performance hall and a second story with a balcony.

It also was before foundation expenses grew “pretty dramatically” when it took 37 feet for drillers to reach solid material to set the pilings, Taylor said.

Construction will begin in August 2019 and end 18 months later, in February or March 2021, Taylor said.

Taylor said Friday the project has garnered $23 million of the $45 million needed to complete it.

Funds include an initial bequest of $9.1 million from the late Donna M. Morris for the performing arts center and $1.43 million from Dorothy Field of Port Angeles to purchase the land.

In the last month, the project received a $90,000 gift, a $60,000 foundation grant, and $1 million gift of Microsoft stock from a Clallam County couple that will, like other large donors, get naming rights.

The couple’s identity will eventually be made public, Taylor said.

The schematic design for the Waterfront Center was recently completed, with more information available at the pawaterfrontcenter.org website and at the organization’s office, open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. five days a week, at 219 N. Oak St. across the street from the site.

It’s staffed by Administrative Assistant Paige Robbins.

The design team includes LMN Architects of Seattle, which designed Benaroya Hall in Seattle; Vanir Construction Management Inc. of Sacramento, Calif., and M.A. Mortenson Company, a Minneapolis, Minn.-based real state and construction company.

Construction and design are going hand-in-hand “so there are no surprises,” Taylor said Wednesday.

“Our design team has the best consultants that money can buy nationwide to design this structure,” he said.

“It will be as good a facility as anywhere in the country.”

According to a yearlong feasibility study and interviews in the community by marketing and fundraising consultants as well as waterfront center board members, the community can afford to build the facility, Taylor said Friday.

“The idea was to get a convergence between what we wanted and what we thought the community can afford,” he said.

“We think we’ve hit that convergence.”

He told the chamber of commerce audience that the project is the modern prototype for a public-private partnership, given the support from Peninsula College, which was bequeathed Donna Morris’ gift; the city of Port Angeles, which has City Manager Nathan West on the board, and Clallam County officials.

He said supporters also include the Feiro Marine Life Center and Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, both of which are planning facilities on the site.

The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe wil be building a multipurpose Longhouse building.

The Feiro Marine Life Center now located at City Pier about four block east of Front and Oak streets is “at the tail end of fundraising” of $250,000 for a new facility there, Executive Director Melissa Williams told the group Wednesday.

“This is the perfect plan, being with the tribe as our site partners,” Williams said.

“The power of community here is really coming to fruition with the marine discovery center.”

Marc Abshire, Chamber of Commerce executive director, said the hope is that the conference-center will help stimulate the winter economy, the same motivation of organizers of the Port Angeles Winter Ice Village skating rink, an effort spearheaded by the chamber.

The 3,200-square-foot temporary rink, in need of volunteers as the effort gets underway, will be at 121 W. Front Street, just across Oak Street from the waterfront center site.

The business community has been thirsting for a conference center in downtown Port Angeles for several decades, Abshire added.

A project vital for the waterfront center’s success is a hotel the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe will build one block east at Front and Laurel streets on a parcel the City Council agreed to sell as surplus to the tribe Sept. 21 for $300,000 cash and a $650,000 credit to cover environmental cleanup costs.

The four-story, $20 million-$25 million hotel will have 86 rooms, two restaurants — and its own meeting space, tribal officials have said.

The tribe’s shoreline permit for the hotel was reactivated at the end of September and is being reviewed by staff, Community and Economic Development Director Allyson Brekke said last week.

Construction is tentatively scheduled for July with completion by the end of next summer — when the Waterfront Center is slated for completion.

Taylor spoke strongly in favor of the sale at the Sept. 21 City Council meeting and reiterated that support Friday.

“Our marketing consultant from Seattle looked at our idea of including a conference center and she said here are the items you need to have a successful conference center,” Taylor said.

“You have all of them except one,” Taylor recalled the consultant saying.

That was sufficient, upscale lodging within walking distance of the Waterfront Center.

“We need that, and they need what we are doing to put heads in their beds,” Taylor said.

“There’s an incredible synergy between the two projects.”

The Red Lion Hotel, three-four blocks east of the Waterfront Center site, “wasn’t considered to be enough lodging within walking distance to support a conference center,” Taylor said.

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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.