PORT ANGELES — Sale of city-owned property for a $20 million-$25 million four-story waterfront hotel in downtown Port Angeles closed last week when the city transferred property to the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe for $950,000.
The purchase price includes $300,000 cash and $650,000 consideration, or credit, for the tribe’s environmental cleanup of the 0.65-acre East Front Street site, where a garage once housed an oil and gas company, and which the City Council declared surplus before selling.
Tribal Chairwoman Frances Charles and Port Angeles Mayor Sissi Bruch signed closing documents Thursday at the Clallam Title building on South Lincoln Street.
“It was a sense of, this is a really important time for Port Angeles, for this,” Bruch recalled Monday.
The transfer was recorded Friday at the Clallam County courthouse Friday, making it official.
“It seems like this will be the beginning of new development downtown, and this will kick it off,” Bruch said.
“This is the first major investment for downtown in a long time.
“It’s nice the tribe is a partner in revitalizing the downtown.”
The construction timeline for completion of the 86-room hotel at 110 E. Railroad Ave. and 111 E. Front St. has been pushed from August 2019 to December 2019-March 2020, project manager Michael Peters said.
The four-star hotel will include a three-story garage, indoor and outdoor restaurants, a bar, and room for meetings.
It will front both East Railroad Avenue, overlooking the Port Angeles Harbor, and East Front Street, with the Olympic Mountains in the distance.
The hotel is seen by organizers of the Port Angeles Waterfront Center as key to the success of the performing arts facility, which is to be built one block west of the hotel by March 2021.
The City Council approved sale of the two surplus parcels to the tribe Sept. 20, setting a closing date of Oct. 30 and a window of five years to build the hotel.
The five-year window for completion — now set for December 2023 — remains in effect, Peters said.
The delay in closing the purchase followed lengthy negotiations between city and tribal leaders that centered on easements for the project, Peters and Bruch said.
“I have no worries about the delay,” Bruch said.
Weather will play a role in determining what construction can be done when, she said.
City Community and Economic Development Director Allyson Brekke said Friday that city and tribal officials will meet in coming days in a pre-permit-application meeting.
They will discuss a shoreline substantial development permit and other approvals required for the project.
The site will require “substantial cleanup,” Brekke said.
The ground will be dewatered, gas tanks removed, and 1,500-2,000 cubic yards of petroleum-contaminated soils removed during cleanup, according to project geologist Shawn Lombardini.
Peters said he expects the tribe will need three to four weeks for demolition and six to eight weeks for cleanup.
Permitting also drives the timeline, he added.
“Our goal is still to get started as soon as possible,” Peters said.
“With weather the driving factor, depending on how that turns out, we could potentially start in mid-late February, early March-type time frame.
“We have a demolition contractor identified, we have a cleanup contractor identified.
“We have been waiting for this day to say, ‘now, tell us when you can put us on your calendars.’ ”
Peters said he does not know when pile driving will take place.
Sheet piling may be required before cleanup and before structural pilings are driven to support the hotel in the fill that underlies the downtown.
“Those will happen a couple months, maybe as much as three months after demolition, Peters said.
“The type of piling used will directly affect that amount of pounding that will need to take place.”
Efforts will be made to reduce the impact of the project on downtown summer activity as much as possible and to communicate with the public about impacts on pedestrian and traffic flow, including the single-lane road closures anticipated on Front Street, the city’s downtown industrial traffic route.
“There will be, off and on, the need for road closures,” Peters said.
City Council member Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin said Friday that traffic disruptions should be expected on a project of the hotel’s magnitude.
He expects that once built, the hotel, combined with the Waterfront Center, will draw visitors to Port Angeles in the off-season, when Olympic National Park and the city are in winter mode.
The tribe will pay property taxes on the parcels until applying for federal trust status for the site, after which the Elwha would pay the city fees for services such as fire and police protection, Peters said.
“That doesn’t mean we are not working on an intergovernmental agreement that will talk about fees in lieu of taxes,” Peters added.
He said he cannot not speculate if fees would be equal to the property taxes that the tribe would otherwise pay if the property is not in trust status.
Before the tribe can apply for trust status, the property must show 12 consecutive months of clean environmental reports that meet state Department of Ecology standards, Peters added.
The tribe does not intend to offer casino gambling at the hotel, which would require a several-year process, Peters said.
“There’s not enough room on that piece of property,” he said.
“We are barely getting enough of a hotel that we think should be built on that property, so [gaming] just doesn’t work.”
Peters said there have been no discussions to buy adjoining property, such as the Cornerhouse Restaurant.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
