PORT ANGELES — The Kalakala Alliance Foundation, formed last week by the historic art deco ferry’s new owner, Steve Rodrigues, will be based in Port Angeles.
Port Angeles resident Cherie Kidd, who Rodrigues hired last week as alliance president, will be based at the office, the location of which has not yet been secured.
Kidd said she wants the office to be in a “high-profile location,” possibly on Lincoln Street, and be a place where some of Rodrigues’ Kalakala memorabilia can be exhibited.
“The Kalakala is a part of our history, and we are hoping we can bring it back and make it an economic engine for the city,” Kidd told about 75 persons attending the Port Angeles Chamber of Commerce’s weekly luncheon meeting at the CrabHouse Restaurant on Monday.
Kidd is a member of a longtime Port Angeles family and owner of Cherie Kidd Success Seminars. She ran unsuccessfully for a City Council seat last fall.
Moorage space
She and Rodrigues are working to secure moorage in Port Angeles on 400-plus feet of privately owned shoreline east of the Red Lion Hotel on Port Angeles Harbor.
Property owners Gerald Austin and Jack and Shirley Glaubert have offered the shoreline — subject to getting the necessary permits — to moor the rusty 1935 ferry, which is in need of an estimated $7 million in renovation.
Kidd and Rodrigues were scheduled to meet with the property owners Monday.
Rodrigues and his Tumwater-based company, Lost Horizons, told the chamber luncheon that he would be marketing Kalakala tokens and porthole windows on the Ebay auction Web site, www.ebay.com.
Porthole windows will be sold for $10,000, which will also give the owner “perpetual access to all activities on the vessel” in the future, a right which can be passed on to family members.
The vessel has more than 300 windows to sell as part of the fund-raiser.
Rodrigues said so far $2,200 has been donated toward restoring the silvery ferry that once plied the waters between Port Angeles and Victoria and between Seattle and Bremerton.
He said half of that amount will be deposited in a Port Angeles bank.
Wants sponsorship
The ferry’s new owner said he has until Feb. 19 to move the ferry from its moorage in Seattle’s Lake Union.
He said his intention is to move it north to Everett to a yet-to-be-firm location there.
Consequently, he said, time is an issue, and Rodrigues urged chamber members to write letters of support to Port Angeles City Council, which is considering being the sponsoring community that would qualify Rodrigues for U.S. Department of Agriculture guaranteed loans to restore the vessel.
“We are looking for a sponsoring community, and we’re really focusing on Port Angeles,” Rodrigues said.
He added that moving the Kalakala to Port Angeles Harbor would provide construction jobs during restoration and that tourism, lodging and tax dollars would follow once the 276-foot-long ferry is opened with a museum, restaurant and conference facilities.
During a Port Angeles support-gathering meeting last week in which Rodrigues explained his vision for the Kalakala, he warned that if he could not raise restoration dollars, “I could still go out and sink it.”
