PORT ANGELES — In a dark and chilly dirt-floor vault beneath downtown, City Council members looked at what they might save by adding $200,000 to a water main project.
Armed with flashlights, Mayor Glenn Wiggins and other council members, along with some city staff, descended Monday below Laurel Street and stood atop piles of dirt and debris as they considered what to do with a one-block portion of the “Port Angeles Underground.”
The discussion on the Underground comes as the city plans replacing water mains dating back to 1914, when downtown street levels were raised more than 10 feet to lift them above tidal flats.
The less expensive of two proposals for replacing the mains calls for filling in a one-block stretch beneath the sidewalk on Laurel Street with sand and gravel.
But local preservationists want to see the Underground maintained for tourism.
“It would just be something over the years I think we could use as a tremendous tourism draw,” said Don Perry, Monday’s tour guide for the council and a member of Heritage Tours, which wants to save most of the existing portions of the Underground.
A similar underground in Seattle — also created when city streets were raised above tidal flooding, turning the first stories of buildings into basements — is a very popular tourist destination.
The council has made no decision on the project and probably will discuss it at their May 6 meeting, Wiggins said.
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