PORT ANGELES — Steve Rodrigues still wants to dock the rusted, beat-up-looking ferry Kalakala along Hollywood Beach, but for the time being, he is setting his sights on Washington, D.C.
The 58-year-old Tacoma-area civil engineer, investor, building contractor and Kalakala owner will update supporters on the project at a private meeting at noon today at Smuggler’s Landing Restaurant and Lounge in Port Angeles, he said Tuesday.
He plans to focus on his upcoming 180-day “Walk of Hope” to the nation’s capital, where he wants President Barack Obama to declare the vessel a national monument.
“Declaring it a national monument would restore its pride, regardless if it sinks or is afloat,” Rodrigues said.
“It deserves full recognition for what it’s done for our communities and our entire state.”
The “Walk for Hope” will consist of a charter bus tour to various national parks and 179 cities, including 10 state capitals, he said.
It begins in Olympia on Jan. 27 and will include walks throughout the Puget Sound before he leaves for Washington, D.C., on Feb. 27.
Educational walk
During what he calls his “journey,” Rodrigues will educate the public about the vessel, maritime history, green technologies and spinal cord injuries — Rodrigues is a spinal cord injury survivor — all the while creating a documentary made up of interviews with citizens and former Kalakala workers in Washington state and the rest of the country, Rodrigues said.
He plans to walk 1,000 to 1,800 miles on the trip “primarily within the cities,” he said.
Rodrigues said he’s hoping to meet Obama on May 27 to ask him to declare the vessel a national monument before returning to Puget Sound by June 27, the Kalakala’s 75th birthday.
Rodrigues has e-mailed the White House about the trip and has not received a response, he said.
Built in 1935, the art-deco style Kalakala ferried cars and people between Seattle and Bremerton and Port Angeles and Victoria until 1967. It was placed on the national Register of Historic Places in 2006.
Rodrigues purchased it in 2003 in a Seattle bankruptcy sale for $136,560.
Now it’s docked at a private Hylebos Waterway pier owned by Tacoma-area contractor and investor Carl Anderson.
“It is at a critical stage where absolutely no community is giving it safe harbor because of the political risks,” Rodrigues said.
In October, Rodrigues had announced potential plans to dock the Kalakala in Port Angeles on property owned by Jack Glaubert and Gerald Austin near Railroad Avenue.
Their five acres straddles a well-traveled section of Waterfront Trail just east of the Red Lion Hotel and the children’s play area at City Pier.
The Austins own about 400 feet of waterfront and more than a dozen lots with an assessed value of $17,505, the Clallam County Assessor’s Office said Tuesday.
A man who lived in a trailer at the site to maintain the property is no longer living there, Austin said Tuesday.
“The assessed value does not reflect the true value,” said Austin, noting the parcel does not have road access.
“You have to open up Railroad Avenue to get the true value,” Austin said. “It’s very undervalued.”
Negotiations
Austin and Glaubert, who want to sell the entire parcel for $1 million, were willing to let Rodrigues have 100 feet of frontage for $240,000, with $40,000 down and an option to buy the rest, Austin said.
“If he had some money, I’d sell him the property,” Austin said.
Austin’s assertion that Rodrigues does not have money is “a wrong statement,” Rodrigues said.
“It takes financing. It doesn’t take money, up-front cash,” he said. “It’s about going into master planning and drawings and preliminary design review with the city.”
The city of Port Angeles is not interested in buying the Glaubert-Austin parcel, City Manager Kent Myers added Tuesday.
But Rodrigues, president of the Kalakala Alliance Foundation, continues to be, he said Tuesday.
He said he would build the marina, tie up the Kalakala and use it as a multi-purpose entertainment vessel, then would repair the splotchy, rusted hull, which hasn’t been maintained for 42 years, at a later, undetermined date.
A floating-dock marina there would cost less than $2 million, and vessel restoration would be about $11.2 million, he said.
Rodrigues has invested his own money in the “Walk of Hope” project, which he estimated would cost “in six figures.”
He would not say how much has been raised to restore the Kalakala, what’s needed to make it a success, or how much money he has raised for the project.
“It’s a moot point,” he said. “We are on a capital funding campaign. We have no need to discuss money related to the project.”
He also has not released a business plan, which he said he will “never” release to the public.
A Butte, Mont., native, Rodrigues was inspired to save the Kalakala by the closure of the Columbia Gardens recreational park east of Butte, which shut down in 1973 to allow expansion of an open pit mine.
“Steve Rodrigues was a laborer’s son and enjoyed the Columbia Gardens,” Rodrigues said.
“He decided to dig out of the ditch as a laborer’s son. I’m out to build a community project and save something significant and so special that it became the Kalakala. For the last six years, I’ve done nothing but this.”
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Staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.