PORT ANGELES — The Port Angeles Downtown Association board reversed course last week on a promotional parking lot sale slated for the Arts in Action weekend July 23-25.
At a special board meeting Thursday night, the board voted 8-2 with one abstention to heed a petition of 33 downtown business owners and cancel the event.
The board had approved it unanimously in April.
The event was intended to benefit downtown business owners by allowing them to sell “all that merchandise sitting in the back that’s building up that you don’t know what to do with,” Association Executive Director Barb Frederick said Friday in an interview.
But the petitioners said it was “an inappropriate use of the parking lot,” which is located between Family Shoe Store and Odyssey Bookshop in the 100 block of Front Street.
They also said closing the lot was antithetical to the purpose of the downtown association, which provides free customer parking for downtown businesses who pay an assessment to the city of Port Angeles.
Family Shoe Store owner Kevin Thompson said the event would eliminate 52 parking spaces during the busiest downtown event of the year.
He said there was no downtown parking to replace the parking lot spaces and that there were other parking lots where the event could be held.
“We’ve had the lot blocked off before, and boy, I can tell you, you can go home,” he said.
It was “disastrous to our business” the three times the lot was closed, Thompson added.
Edna Petersen, a downtown association member who had chaired a subcommittee to plan the event and had been working on it for six months, read a statement in which she said — choking back her emotions — that she would no longer work on the event and that she only recently learned of the petition.
“I rarely run from a fight, especially one I know is fair,” she said.
“It was divisive for the downtown,” she added. “When we all work together, we will all succeed.”
Petersen said in a later interview that she will have to contact “about 20 businesses” to notify them the event has been canceled.
Board President Greg Voyles, owner of Farmers Insurance in Armory Square, said the issue of lost parking did not come up when the board approved the event. He said he did not know why.
“It’s a good question,” he said, adding that people sometimes don’t notice an event is occurring “unless it negatively impacts them, and then everybody wants to be involved.”
In other discussion Thursday, board members reviewed plans for a “Steam Ball” at the Masonic Temple, 622 S. Lincoln St., on Aug. 13 in conjunction with Heritage Weekend.
The concert-dance will feature a performance by the popular Seattle Steampunk band Abney Park and is being organized by downtown association board member Drew Schwab, owner of Anime Kat.
Schwab is challenging Port Angeles Councilman Brad Collins in the Nov. 8 general election.
Steampunk fashion and music focuses on Western culture from more than 100 years ago, when steam was the primary source of power.
Moderns items and clothing are often transformed to look as they might have looked in the 1800s.
“Think of it as science fiction from the 1800s, Jules Verne-style stuff,” Schwab said.
Tickets will be $20 presale and $25 at the door.
Schwab said he expects the event will attract well-heeled steampunk fans from out of town.
Heritage Weekend will have an Edwardian theme this year to coincide with the impending removal of the Elwha River dams, which were built between 1913 and 1927, downtown association members were told.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
