PORT ANGELES — The former IOOF building at 314 W. Front St. will undergo a major overhaul this year, thanks to its new owner, artist Maureen Hope Wall.
“I saw it for sale this summer — and it was love at first sight,” Wall says.
“Artists gravitate to weird buildings no one else wants.”
She has a three-phase plan for renovating the dilapidated former home of Port Angeles’ chapter of the International Order of Odd Fellows.
It was built in 1912 and used in recent years as an apartment house for low-income renters.
The building is across First Street from radio KONP studios at the western entrance to downtown Port Angeles.
Other downtown business owners have long complained the old building gave a poor impression to visitors entering the city from the west.
The first phase of the building’s renovation will be repainting the building and installing a new foundation, which Wall hopes to have done by August.
Sometime in April after the permits are approved, heavy machinery will be used to pick up the building by its first floor — the basement is too unstable — and raise it off the ground.
