SEQUIM — In hopes of uplifting the last passenger airline on the North Olympic Peninsula — and giving three towns a push — the Port of Port Angeles is seeking a $400,000 federal grant.
So Jeff Robb, the port’s airport director, told the Sequim City Council on Monday night, while asking for a piece of the required “local match.”
To win the grant, the port must pull together $40,000 from local sources, Robb said. In hopes that Sequim can contribute $10,000 of that, he explained how this community, along with Port Angeles and Forks, could benefit from the airline’s subsidy.
“We’re going to market the North Olympic Peninsula” that’s wrapped around Port Angeles’ air strips, he said. If Kenmore wins the grant, it will highlight this region in all its diversity, from Forks-LaPush Twilight tours to Sequim’s sunshine and Lavender Festival.
The Peninsula is competing with rural regions all over the country for $8 million in U.S. Department of Transportation monies, Robb added. The grant sum is called the Small Community Air Service Development Program, and if the port can show broad support, it stands a better chance of beating other towns desperate for marketing money.
Already the port has received an informal nod from Port Angeles City Manager Kent Myers, who said last Friday that his city will consider contributing to the local match.
Forks Mayor Nedra Reed added on Tuesday that she’ll be happy to write a letter of support for the port, but her town is in no financial position to supply real money.
“It’s very important to this community to keep Kenmore Air,” Reed said. But if the airline is going to stay over the long term, “they have to be profitable. They can’t continue to be subsidized by the government.”
Kenmore marketing director Craig O’Neil agreed. While the grant is a “great opportunity” that would help his carrier “get over the hump,” he said it’s not the determinant of whether Kenmore planes will keep alighting in Port Angeles.
On Monday night, however, the Sequim council heard a warning about Kenmore’s financial condition.
“In fall of ’08, they were in our office saying serving this small community was not penciling in the black,” said Linda Rotmark, executive director of the Clallam Economic Development Council.
In an interview Tuesday, O’Neil sought to brighten the horizon.
“We’re in a much more confident place now than we were at the beginning of the year,” he said. The May closure of the Hood Canal Bridge sent a lot of passengers into the air, and now Kenmore is finalizing an interline agreement with Alaska Airlines. Travelers who book trips to the Northwest on Alaska and then on to Port Angeles on Kenmore will be able to purchase and fly on one ticket, O’Neil said.
“Being visible in their system means a lot,” as does “the improved seamlessness of booking travel.”
O’Neil expects the agreement to be in effect this fall.
Earlier this year, Kenmore received $10,000 in Port Angeles lodging-tax money to help with marketing — but the airline has yet to spend that, and O’Neil said the sum may end up added into the local match for the federal grant.
The Sequim council, meantime, is sending Robb’s request for another $10,000 to its own lodging-tax board, the Sequim Marketing Action Committee, also known as SMAC. The panel will meet at 1 p.m. Monday in the Transit Center, 190 W. Cedar St., to consider the proposal.
Council member Erik Erichsen expressed some skepticism, however, about asking SMAC for money that would be spread around the county.
“The SMAC committee is going to ask, ‘What’s in it for Sequim?'” Erichsen said.
Council member Walt Schubert dismissed that comment, saying the grant would be the kind of collaborative effort that Clallam residents expect from their governments. Keeping Kenmore is key to economic growth here, Schubert emphasized. “That’s one of the questions companies ask when they come out here,” he said, “about transportation.”
Robb said finally that the deadline for submitting the port’s application is coming soon: Aug. 28. The U.S. Department of Transportation will announce winners in December.
Last year, Transportation awarded some $6.5 million in marketing grants to 15 smallish towns, from Bullhead City, Ariz., and Missoula, Mont., to Merced, Calif., and Sioux Falls, S.D.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
