PORT ANGELES — Dueling, unscientific public-opinion assessments are part of an impasse over Feiro Marine Life Center’s proposal to shrink and reduce usage of the long-term public parking lot at City Pier as part of building a new marine science facility.
A survey by the Port Angles Business Association presented to the City Council last week showed a majority of parking lot users favored keeping the Lincoln Street-Railroad Avenue parking lot at City Pier as is.
But according to priorities selected during May 12-14 open house gatherings, parking was a low priority for residents with visions of Feiro’s and the City Pier’s future.
“There really needs to be a thorough evaluation of parking in that area,” City Manager Dan McKeen said Friday.
The City Council, which does not charge rent to Feiro on the city-owned pier, will decide the lot’s fate.
“If in fact a design would include a reduction of parking there, that would prompt an evaluation,” McKeen said.
“We would need to be able to look at other parking that is available in that area or other parking that may be available to mitigate the lost parking at the pier.”
Forging plans
Feiro is forging plans that would rely on City Pier visitors parking elsewhere downtown so its aging 35-year-old center can be replaced.
A substantially larger educational and display center would be made possible by cutting the current 35 parking spaces, which include two handicapped spots, to 10 handicapped and short-term slots for visitors going to Feiro, an adjacent play area and popular, nearby Hollywood Beach, which the city also wants to improve.
Two designs are being contemplated that received positive public input during public meetings in May on the project, according to Studio Cascade.
Those designs would increase the center’s footprint — the present single-story building is 3,500 square feet — to a 10,000-square-foot footprint at a cost of $3 million to $3.7 million.
A 13,400- to 16,000-square-foot, two-story building would house Feiro and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration educational displays along with public restrooms and Feiro administrative offices.
Feiro officials are calling the combined facility a Feiro/NOAA discovery center.
Final recommendation
Feiro Executive Director Melissa Williams said Friday that Studio Cascade will present a final recommendation later this summer on the two designs, known as “Klallam Cove” and “Peabody Place.”
The recommendation will include results of an additional online master plan design survey on the Pier’s future.
“It’s a matter of how you fit everything into what community wants to see on the Pier,” Williams said.
Council members got an earful on impacts of reducing the size and use of the parking lot at their June 21 meeting.
Downtown merchants
“It would be detrimental to use of the City Pier and to residents who use it to park their cars and the people who go there for their activity,” said Jon Fager, treasurer of the Port Angeles Business Association.
Fager, a retired nuclear inspector, said the business association conducted a survey of 127 local City Pier parking lot users from noon to 6 p.m. June 17-20 that showed a vast majority favored keeping the parking lot as is.
PABA survey participants were told in a brochure that “a group of concerned citizens strongly opposes any plan that would reduce parking or access to the Hollywood Beach area.”
They were asked to “save the parking lot for the community.”
Fager said 62 local respondents opposed eliminating the lot, two were in favor, 36 did not express an opinion and 27 were neutral.
Of 62 out-of-town City Pier users, 26 opposed elimination while 36 were neutral.
The destination for half the out-of-town users was “other, including Feiro,” according to survey results.
“There were very few people going to Feiro when we were taking the survey,” Fager said Friday.
Young Johnson, president of the Port Angeles Downtown Association, who owns H2O Waterfront Bistro across Railroad Avenue from the Pier, said downtown entrepreneurs wanted Feiro to grow but not at the expense of losing the parking space.
“It is all about convenience for our community,” she told City Council members.
Bottleneck
But in a letter that was read to the council and was written by Feiro Secretary Andy Geiger, council members were told the facility is “a bottleneck” by being too small to meet Feiro’s current demands.
“We believe walking or biking to an improved City Pier will expose people to businesses they may not have encountered before,” Geiger said in the letter,
“As one of the top ‘outdoor towns’ in the U.S., we should be proud of the opportunity to add more steps and keep our countywide obesity rates as low as possible.”
According to results of priorities discussed May 14 in a public meeting organized for Feiro by Studio Cascade Inc. of Spokane, respondents to the May 12-14 assessment said parking was the second lowest priority among 10 that they rated.
Their top feature was a consolidation of Feiro and NOAA into the discovery center.
“We know there has to be some parking,” Mark Hinshaw, a principal in Walker Macy Landscape Architecture of Portland, Ore., said May 14 at the public meeting on the Klallam Cove and Peabody Place designs.
“We know that has been the subject of some discussion,” he acknowledged.
But whether the current number of Pier parking lot spaces needs to remain “is another kind of question,” Hinshaw said.
“That question probably gets asked in the context of a larger parking-demand study for downtown.
“You can’t just look at one lot and say, ‘we need that parking.’
“It’s totally illogical.
“You have to look at the entire supply of parking, how it’s being used, who’s using this lot.”
Bill Grimes of Studio Cascade said the ratings exercise is a valuable design tool.
“It is the expression of what the client might be looking for, the client being the overall community,” he said.
The Waterfront and Transportation Improvement Plan, headed by Studio Cascade and approved by the City Council in 2011, called for replacing 22 City Pier parking lot spaces with parking now located three blocks east of Feiro at Railroad Avenue and Oak Street.
Back then, Feiro was considering relocating away from the Pier to Oak and Front streets.
“We have new council members who are different than in 2011,” Nathan West, community and economic development director, said last week.
“They may have different opinions.”
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
