PORT ANGELES — Developer Randal Jay Ehm is confident his Oak Street hotel and conference center project will be built — now that its shoreline building permit was approved, a lawsuit against it was dropped and talks are underway for a nearby parking garage.
As for the naysayers, “they have my permission to continue to believe what they want,” Ehm said Thursday.
Ehm, president of Ehm Architecture of Seattle and San Diego, has proposed a four-story, 165-room hotel and conference center worth about $17.5 million to be built on 3.75 acres at the corner of First and Oak streets.
The City Council has pledged $100,000 annually of the city’s hotel-motel bed revenues for the next 20 years to help support marketing of the conference center, once certain conditions are met.
The Port of Port Angeles agreed earlier this year to sell the downtown waterfront land to Ehm for about $1 million.
But Ehm still hasn’t signed the deal to buy the Port property or begin lease payments to the state Department of Natural Resources for adjacent land that will be used as a park area in front of the hotel/conference center.
Ehm says he is still pursuing financing — and is wary that there could be more environmental hurdles.
“I don’t want to pay for something I can’t use,” he said.
“I’m sensitive to the Port’s interests. They are anxious to get it sold, and so I am. I’m not stalling, just being conservative.”
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The rest of the story appears in the Friday/Saturday Peninsula Daily News Clallam County edition. Click on SUBSCRIBE, above, to get the PDN delivered to your home or office.