PORT ANGELES — Nearly two dozen entrepreneurs from Victoria will visit Port Angeles on Wednesday for a public luncheon, a walkabout downtown and a conversation about how the two cities can strengthen the ties that bind them.
The five-hour visit, initiated by Mayor Cheri Kidd and organized by her and the Port Angeles Downtown Association, will include a $15-per-person buffet lunch at the Red Lion Hotel to which the public is invited, Kidd said, adding that about 20 business leaders from Victoria are expected to make the trip.
“The purpose of the luncheon and the whole visit is how we can continue cooperative efforts,” Kidd said.
The luncheon, with tickets payable at the door, will begin after Kidd meets the delegation, which will arrive on the 12:05 p.m. MV Coho ferry.
The group will return home on the 5:20 p.m. sailing.
Kidd said she has asked that a member of the Victoria delegation also give a presentation.
“As far as I know, this is a first, to have a group of business people come over [to Port Angeles],” Kidd said.
Interim City Manager Dan McKeen will give a brief presentation as will Kidd, who will discuss Port Angeles’ sesquicentennial, the city’s 150th anniversary which coincides with Victoria’s 1862 founding.
“Dan and I will be talking about the highlights of what’s going on and where we are headed,” Kidd said.
“We’re just looking at letting them know why they should be here,” she said.
“A lot of people over there really see the mountains but don’t understand why they’d enjoy a visit here,” she added.
“This is part of the effort I’m making to have greater exposure back and forth between Victoria and Port Angeles.”
Among the visitors will be Les Chan, a member of the Victoria A.M. Association and self-proclaimed goodwill ambassador of Victoria’s Chinatown.
“We want to enhance tourism to Victoria,” said Chan, who has retired from his business of giving guided tours of Chinatown.
“Seeing that Port Angeles is one of our closest neighbors in the States, we’d like to enhance that and create an imaginary bridge between Port Angeles and Victoria,” he said.
Kidd said the visitors’ walk through downtown Port Angeles will highlight locations of Port Angeles’ “underground,” and include a discussion of the city’s upcoming waterfront improvement project near the ferry dock, as well as visits to Family Shoe Store and Country Aire Natural Foods, which recently moved from cramped quarters on First Street to the larger former Gottschalks building at First and Oak streets.
“That is so, so cool,” Country Aire General Manager Sam Nugent said Friday of the upcoming visit.
“We are going to put our dress clothes on. We’ve been saying we really want to start talking to the Victoria side. Victoria is the Miami of Canada,” Nugent said.
The visitors also will take a tour of Westport Shipyard’s yacht-building facility on Marine Drive.
Kidd said discussions about a trip by Victoria business leaders to Port Angeles earlier this year during a trip by Kidd and then-City Manager Kent Myers to the city.
Kidd and Myers met with Victoria Mayor Dean Fortin and members of the city’s downtown business association.
Fortin will be in Port Angeles’ Independence Day parade, Kidd added.
The city of Victoria, which is British Columbia’s provincial capital, has a population of about 80,000, compared with Port Angeles’ approximately 19,000 residents.
Wednesday won’t be the first time Chan has visited Port Angeles.
For the past eight years, he has demonstrated cooking at the Dungeness Crab & Seafood Festival held each October in Port Angeles, he said.
Chan, author of the 1988 Don’t Stir-fry in the Nude: A Beginner’s Guide to Fabulous Chinese Cooking, is on the board of the Canadian Culinary Federation.
He said he recently met with Kidd and sees Wednesday’s visit as “a wonderful opportunity for us to go over there and meet with people of Port Angeles — and vice-versa.”
He also encouraged visitors to come to Victoria.
“It’s a quick hop on the ferry,” he said.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
Managing Editor/News Leah Leach contributed to this report.