PORT ANGELES — Long-held plans to increase traffic on increasingly residential Lauridsen Boulevard barely survived last week when the City Council voted 3-3 on a motion to remove it from the existing city comprehensive land-use plan.
The tie vote Tuesday during a first reading of a newly amended plan doomed the motion by City Councilwoman Sissi Bruch.
Councilman Dan Gase, who was excused from the meeting because he was working, could have broken the tie.
He said Friday he will consider revising those sections of the existing plan that mandate further developing the broad thoroughfare just south of downtown Port Angeles.
Bruch and Councilmen Lee Whetham and Michael Merideth had voted to send Sections 3-7 of the transportation element back to the planning commission, which will be reviewing them in January.
They could not muster a majority against Mayor Patrick Downie, Deputy Mayor Cherie Kidd and Councilman Brad Collins.
Council members will conduct a second reading of the land-use blueprint at their June 21 meeting.
Under state law, by June 30 the City Council must approve the plan, which will not undergo City Council public hearings.
Tuesday’s vote means the direction of developing the city’s widest street as a cross-town route for truck traffic stays intact for now, a policy that appeared in 1994 in the first comprehensive plan.
But that directive’s days might be numbered.
The planning commission, which recommended the council approve the revisions, in January will take a new look at sections related to the truck-routing of Lauridsen Boulevard, which would include improving the intersection at Lauridsen and Lincoln Street.
Trucks now make their way west down U.S. Highway 101 — also referred to by the city as Front Street — to the downtown core.
They travel along retail-heavy Front Street where 101 turns south at Lincoln, connect with Marine Drive as it becomes more industrial, and course up Tumwater Truck Route to reconnect with 101.
Lauridsen bypass plans were established to lessen downtown traffic.
That route would turn south at Race Street, which also is being developed as an entry corridor to Olympic National Park, before turning west at the Peabody Creek bridge onto Lauridsen Boulevard.
More than two decades later, those plans are striking a negative chord among residents, Gase said.
“I can appreciate that circumstances are a lot different now than when they originally started talking about this in 1994,” Gase said Friday.
“I was here in 1967, when more than 200 logging trucks would go through town, and the community was thriving.
“To be overly concerned about the traffic through downtown when it’s just a fraction of traffic that we used to have, I don’t think that’s the counter-argument to a newly adjusting residential area up on the boulevard.”
Development of Lauridsen has been ongoing as the area also has become — and will become — more residential.
Sixty-three new town homes and apartments are planned at Mount Angeles View Family Housing complex, which also skirts the street near the Peabody Creek bridge.
At the meeting Tuesday, Bruch argued for what she called a creative and positive solution.
“A lot of people out there are really upset about the Lauridsen truck route,” she said.
“Let’s just air this out.”
But Kidd, Downie and Collins urged staying the course.
“We’ve heard from retailers who have been dismayed by truck traffic that continues to rumble downtown,” Kidd said.
“It’s certainly not pedestrian-friendly.”
Whetham pledged to vote against the entire comprehensive plan if making Lauridsen a bypass route continues as a priority.
He said a new clubhouse for the Port Angeles unit of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula will be built along the route. A new Head Start facility also is planned in the area.
“Currently, I have reservations about naming Lauridsen and Race Street as a truck route,” Whetham said.
His constituents, he added, are worried about “the new truck route” and inundated him with their concerns during one of the council members’ regular appearances at the Saturday Port Angeles Farmers Market.
Merideth also noted the large number of children who cross the Peabody Creek bridge daily with adults, saying traffic is already heavy without adding more heavy-truck traffic.
But others said there’s nothing new about the street’s future.
The transportation elements related to Lauridsen “are not being newly proposed,” Nathan West, community and economic development director, told council members.
Said Collins: “You can’t just decide that this is new when, in fact, this is what we have been implementing for 10, 20 years.”
The 212-page comprehensive plan, which also contains land use, housing, capital facilities and utilities and public service elements, addresses how the city will accommodate a projected 5,000 new residents throughout the next 20 years.
Lauridsen, one of the city’s eight busiest streets, intersects with the densely residential Cherry Hill, Mount Angeles, Civic and Jefferson neighborhoods, according to the document.
Franklin Elementary School and the North Olympic Library System’s city branch also abut the thoroughfare.
Lauridsen was improved two years ago when the new bridge was built over Peabody Creek at the Race Street intersection.
The April 2014 ribbon-cutting ceremony for the bridge included hundreds of children walking across the bridge to herald its opening.
According to the comprehensive plan, the span “will allow truck traffic to make the turn and follow Lauridsen as intended for the cross-town alternative to Highway 101.”
________
Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
