PORT ANGELES — The Port of Port Angeles will consider May 26 selling 4 acres of land near its waterfront to Platypus Marine Inc.
Ken O’Hollaren, port executive director, said the sale question probably will be on the agenda for port commissioners’ next regular meeting. It will start at 9 a.m. in port headquarters. 338 W. First St.
O’Hollaren spoke against the sale at Monday’s luncheon meeting of the Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce in the Red Lion Hotel. He countered remarks by Marty Marchant, Platypus’ sales and marketing director.
The port prefers to continue leasing the site at Cedar Street and Marine Drive to Platypus. The company wants to buy it, as its next-door neighbor, Westport LLC, did with 3 acres in 2003 for $530,000 when the company was known as Westport Shipyard.
O’Hollaren said port commissioners who no longer are in office agreed to that controversial sale because they were competing with the Port of Anacortes for Westport’s yacht-building operation.
The port and Platypus have jockeyed for about a year behind the scenes.
In March, the marine company’s owner, Judson Linnabary, brought it into open by offering to buy the site he said was worth $700,000.
The port has said its value could be $2 million.
Linnabary said Platypus wants to double its boat-building and repair business — and its current 70-person workforce. It would pay wages averaging $48,500 a year, Linnabary said.
“We’re beyond our capacity,” Marchant told a Chamber of Commerce audience of about three dozen at Monday’s meeting, citing contracts Platypus holds with the Navy and Coast Guard and a pact it is negotiating with the Army Corps of Engineers.
Platypus customers also builds and repairs private yachts and fishing vessels.
A sale, he said, would keep the actual harbor-front in port ownership and not block access to its terminals.
But O’Hollaren repeated port commissioners’ point that the state’s public ports paid dearly for land that once was monopolized by railroads and by pulp and timber mills.
If every public port director in the country were to speak, he said, each would oppose selling the land — “and never on the waterfront because it is so rare and limited.”
But Marchant echoed Linnabary’s disinclination to continue leasing the site it has occupied for 14 years.
“We’ve looked into their lease offer and tried to get there, but financially it doesn’t make sense to put $5 million into property we don’t own,” he said of Platypus’ proposed expansion.
Two port commissioners, Jim Hallett and Colleen McAleer, have said they’d consider selling the property if it were the only way to keep Platypus in town. Commissioner John Calhoun said he’d probably vote against it.
Neither Marchant nor Linnabary have said what Platypus might do if it cannot buy its location.
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.