CLARIFICATION: To clarify, the terms of a lease the Port of Port Angeles has offered to Platypus Marine calls for 50 years “with a combination of an initial term and renewal options totaling 50 years,” according to a letter to Platypus. Port Executive Director Ken O’Hollaren said Wednesday the lease did not offer two 50-year terms.
A report on the lease offer and Platypus’ reaction to it appears below.
The lease also calls for the port to pave open areas and “adjust the monthly rent based on a 50 percent cost-recovery formula.” O’Hollaren, who signed the April 13 offer letter to Platypus owner Judson Linnabary, said the reference “did not entail a refund per se,” responding to a term used in Wednesday’s article.
PORT ANGELES — Platypus Marine Inc. wants a yes or no answer from the Port of Port Angeles on the firm’s proposal to purchase the land it presently leases.
Platypus owner Judson Linnabary has said that if he can buy the land Platypus occupies, he will double its current 75-person payroll with jobs that pay an average $48,500 a year.
Port commissioners have said they’re reluctant to sell land they hold in public trust.
At their meeting Tuesday, commissioners said they still prefer to continue leasing the 5 acres that front Marine Drive at North Cedar Street.
They could make a decision April 28, the date of their next meeting.
“I’d just like to know when we can vote on a sale of the property, yea or nay, a schedule of when we can make things happen,” Linnabary told port commissioners Tuesday.
Port Commissioner John Calhoun directed Linnabary’s attention to a letter Linnabary had received Monday that outlined the port’s proposed lease.
“In my mind, the ball’s in your court now,” Calhoun told Linnabary.
“I think we’ve offered you a framework for continuing negotiations on a lease. You should respond to the letter and initiate further discussions.”
Put it to vote
Calhoun added: “But if you aren’t going to respond to the letter at all, then I guess we’ll have to take a vote.”
Linnabary said he’d wanted the question put on the agenda for the commission’s April 28 meeting.
Calhoun has said publicly he might oppose the sale. Commissioner Colleen McAleer has said she’d support it if it were the only option available.
“I’m hoping you can negotiate a lease proposition,” she told Linnabary on Tuesday. “See if there’s common ground that will work.”
Commissioner Jim Hallett originally said he would back the sale but subsequently hasn’t restated his position.
“The goal as I understand it is how we can work with a good, long-standing tenant who wants to expand its business with benefits to the community,” he said.
Hallett said the letter contained “first-of-its-kind creative terms that could work very well for you.”
According to the letter to Linnabary from Ken O’Hollaren, the port’s executive director, the lease would run 50 years with a negotiable extension of another 50 years.
The letter — a copy of which was given to the Peninsula Daily News by Marty Marchant, the firm’s director of sales and marketing — also says:
■ The port would assess a fee based on Platypus’ square footage for a stormwater treatment facility it plans to build to handle runoff from the port’s log-storage yard, Westport, Platypus and the former KPly site.
■ The port will pave areas not occupied by buildings with a 50 percent refund to Platypus.
■ Platypus would pay $6,795 a month for the first five years of the lease. It currently has 30 years to go on its present lease, Marchant said. He said he did not know how much Platypus presently pays in rent.
The rent could be reduced under an “employment incentive formula,” the letter said, based on how many jobs Platypus could create and maintain.
Based on Linnabary’s promised 75 new jobs, the rent credit “could be $187,538 over a seven-year period,” according to the letter.
‘We can’t digest it’
The port’s proposal had been the subject of a closed meeting among commissioners and O’Hollaren on Friday about which commissioners declined comment.
After Tuesday’s meeting, Marchant criticized the letter, saying: “From a business standpoint, you can’t digest what’s there. From a business standpoint, we can’t operate that way.”
Marchant and Linnabary said Platypus’s owning the land it presently leases is key to raising capital to double its facilities and payroll.
Platypus builds and repairs recreational craft, commercial fishing boats and vessels of the Coast Guard and Navy.
The port’s preference for a long-term lease “is completely one-sided,” Marchant said.
“They are completely dead-set that they can figure out a way to put a lease together.”
As for a lease, Marchant told the PDN “it would have to be the golden egg” for Platypus to accept.
He didn’t say what the firm plans to do if it cannot buy the land, but he summed up Platypus’ position:
“The long and the short of it is: Get out of our way.”
Calhoun told Linnabary the port had offered “substantial inducements to the lease. It’s a big move in terms of change to what your current lease is.
“Work out the issues and see what is still problematic.
“It could be done in the next 30 days as far as I’m concerned.”
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com
