PORT ANGELES — Developers eyeing Port Angeles Harbor can get a clearer waterfront view due to a $17.2 million settlement of Hood Canal Bridge graving yard disputes.
The settlement will fund a survey of the harborfront to identify where native ancestral remains might lie under the ground.
And despite worries that discovery of the ancient Klallam village of Tse-whit-zen and its cemetery would close the whole shoreline to builders, those anxieties didn’t become realities, city, civic and Port officials have told Peninsula Daily News.
No projects were planned for the waterfront at the time, so none were abandoned.
The three-year graving yard imbroglio “probably didn’t change anything at that point in time,” said Dan Gase, president of Coldwell Banker Uptown Realty and 2005 president of the Port Angeles Chamber of Commerce.
Nothing much was going on when the graving yard closed, he said.
“I believe that the whole development potential was a little bit cool at that time anyhow,” Gase said.
Fears high at one time
The graving yard — a huge onshore dry dock that was to build replacement components for the floating Hood Canal Bridge — came to grief when excavators unearthed 337 Klallam burials soon after construction started in August 2003.
The Lower Elwha Klallam tribe called a halt to the project in December 2004, setting off 20 months of litigation and negotiation between it and the state Department of Transportation.
The closure cost the tribe and the non-native community 120 “family wage” jobs and raised fears that, as Linda Rotmark, executive director of the Clallam County Economic Development Council, put it:
“No one was going to be able to put a shovel into the ground.”
Yet those fears never materialized, she said.
Looking forward
Now, Rotmark foresees a Tse-whit-zen museum on the Marine Drive portion of the site that fronts 11 acres that will become a historic cemetery.
“Everyone’s looking forward to moving forward.” Rotmark said.
Scott Johns, Port Angeles associate planner, said above-ground construction continued on the waterfront during 2005 and 2006, including work at the Boat Haven and Nippon Paper Industries USA.
Dave Hagiwara, deputy director of the Port of Port Angeles, also said he knew of no prospective developers who backed away from Port Angeles while the graving yard’s future was in doubt.
But, the archaeological survey would minimize their worries of excavating human remains, according to Hagiwara.
“The aim is to create an environment of certainty for future activities along the waterfront,” he said. “That’s a good step forward.”
Reassurance
Such reassurance was Gov. Chris Gregoire’s theme when she visited Port Angeles to sign the settlement Aug. 14 along with Tribal Chairwoman Frances Charles, Port Angeles Mayor Karen Rogers and Port Commissioner Bill Hannan.
“Don’t be afraid of coming here,” Gregoire told the crowd of more than 100 people at the signing ceremony in the Vern Burton Center.
“The welcome mat is out.”
That mat includes up to $500,000 with which the city can lure businesses to Clallam County or convince them to remain here.
The agreement also set aside $7.5 million each for the city and port to fund capital improvements to encourage developments, $480,000 for the city to hire an archaeologist to conduct the shoreline survey, and $2.5 million for the tribe to rebury the 337 intact remains taken from Tse-whit-zen and now stored in handmade cedar bodes.