PORT TOWNSEND — A California company has selected Raymond in Pacific County to construct a shipbuilding plant instead of Port Townsend and Olympia, which also were in the running.
Santa Maria Shipping LLC President Stas Margaronis said the political environment in Port Townsend and a meeting with former Mayor Kees Kolff is what gave Raymond the edge.
“The discussion with the mayor focused on the fact that we weren’t going to get a free ride into town,” Margaronis told the Peninsula Daily News on Tuesday.
“It had the connotation that we weren’t wanted by some people in the community.”
But Kolff said he didn’t tell Santa Maria officials their plan would or would not work in Port Townsend.
Kolff, who was mayor when he met with Santa Maria, said he was honest about obstacles the company could face in Port Townsend, but he didn’t mean for it to be conceived negatively.
“My intent was not to scare them away,” he said.
“My intent, in response to their questions about political realities here was to help identify the potential issues so they could go about promoting their plan in the best way possible.”
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