PORT ANGELES — Plans for Feiro Marine Life Center’s new facility on Oak Street will be presented at 9:15 a.m. today at the Port of Port Angeles commissioners meeting.
The meeting begins at 9 a.m. in the public meeting room at the port’s administrative office building, 338 W. First St.
Neeser Construction Inc. of Anchorage, Alaska, still has not purchased the property where the Marine Life Center and a city leased conference room would be located at Front and Oak streets in the western corner of downtown.
“There is no problem,” Neeser’s project administrator, Gary Donnelly, said Monday.
Today’s presentation will be given by Scott Horner of Bainbridge Island-based BIOS LLC, which specializes in designing aquariums and marine science centers.
Horner is personally acquainted with Neeser CEO Jerry Neeser.
The project may require use of a port dock for water intake, port Property Manager Tanya Kerr said Monday.
The company submitted pre-application drawings for the building permit last week, Nathan West, city community and economic development director, said Monday.
Neeser has said he expects building plans for the project, the cost of which also has not been disclosed, to be submitted to the city “on or about June 1.”
Donnelly said in January he expected the sale would go through in February and would not comment Monday on why a purchase-and-sale agreement with property owner Tod McClaskey Jr., owner of Olympic Lodge, has not been signed.
Donnelly said Neeser has found “some” tenants — he would not say how many or who — to occupy the building that would constitute Phase 1 of the project.
It would house the Marine Life Center, marine-related businesses and a 5,800-square-foot conference center.
Construction is scheduled to begin in July on the approximately 27,000-square-foot Phases 1 building on the 1.96-acre waterfront parcel, formerly a log yard.
Construction is slated to begin in 2015 on a second, 36,000-40,000-square-foot building that would consist of covered space and open-air exhibit space.
Officials with Feiro said they have outgrown their existing facilities at City Pier along the waterfront about four blocks east of Oak Street.
McClaskey and Moriarty did not return calls Monday for comment.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
