PORT ANGELES — Construction on the Field Arts & Events Hall is about to begin.
An invitation-only ground-breaking for the 41,000-square-foot facility at the corner of Front and Oak streets is set for 6 p.m. Friday and will be immediately followed at 8 p.m. with an after-party to which the public is invited.
The after-party will go on until 10 p.m. at Barhop Brewing and Artisan Pizza at 124 W. Railroad Ave. and will feature drawings of the new building, as well as the team that designed it.
A dollar from each pint sold will be donated to the capital campaign for the building.
“We’re still raising money,” said Chris Fidler, executive director of Field Arts and Events Hall.
“We have enough to construct the building and now need to raise the remainder and get it finished.”
The total cost is expected to be about $30 million to $31 million.
Permits for the project are expected “any day now,” Fidler said, adding that plans are undergoing a final review.
The 41,000-square-foot Field Arts & Events Hall is the first of the three buildings planned as the Port Angeles Waterfront Center on the 1.6-acre plot now occupied by a Black Ball Ferry Line parking lot and a grassy area.
The campus will include a Lower Elwha Klallam tribal longhouse, and the Marine Discovery Center, a joint project to house the Feiro Marine Life Center and a visitor center for the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary.
The conditional use permit for the arts center seeks to exceed the city’s 45-foot building height restriction by 5.4 feet at the center of the two-story building, where the 500-seat Morris Auditorium — named after the late Donna M. Morris, who bequeathed the initial $9 million for the “design, construction and maintenance” of a performing arts center in Port Angeles when she died in 2014.
The tallest point is 40.4 feet for the rest of the building, which would include a coffee shop, meeting facilities for up to 300 people and a 1,000-square-foot art gallery that Brooke Taylor, Waterfront Center board chairman, has said he hopes the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center will help run. The Fine Arts Center was named as a will partner in Morris’ bequest.
The design of the new structure, which is expected to be completed in late spring or early summer 2021, is by LMN Architects of Seattle and the contractor is Mortenson Construction, which is based in Minneapolis, Minn., and has an office in Seattle.
The performing arts center is named after Dorothy Field, a Waterfront Center board member who donated $1.43 million to buy the parcel.
For more information on the project and capital campaign, or to donate, visit www.fieldhallevents.org or call Jessica Hernandez, director of development, at 360-477-4679.
The office at 219 N. Oak St. also is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, and contains artists renderings of the project.
