PORT ANGELES — The Port of Port Angeles rang up “no sale” Tuesday on 4 acres of harbor front that Platypus Marine Inc. wants to buy.
Port commissioners voted unanimously to instruct their executive director to continue pursuing a lease of the land that Platypus already occupies at Marine Drive and Cedar Street.
Commissioner John Calhoun led the opposition to the sale, saying that with 30 years left on its current lease and its present $5 million investment, Platypus isn’t likely to leave Port Angeles.
“That remains to be seen,” Platypus owner Judson Linnabary retorted from his seat in the audience.
Told by Platypus that the company must own the property for it to get financing to double its business and jobs, Calhoun and Commissioner Jim Hallett both said, “I think that’s a false choice.”
Commissioner Colleen McAleer said major retailers like Walgreens and Rite Aid “never own their buildings,” preferring to invest their capital in developing their businesses.
Furthermore, Calhoun said, the port is negotiating with another marine trades firm that is willing to accept a lease of another piece of harbor-front property.
Although it has received the port’s lease offer, Platypus hasn’t negotiated with port officials, they said.
McAleer told Linnabary: “I haven’t seen your counter to the lease offer. I’d still like to give that a shot.
“If we cannot come to lease terms that would work, I would move to support a sale, but we haven’t gotten there yet.”
Commissioners heard a parade of people who urged them to sell the land, as it had in 2003 to Platypus’ next-door neighbor, Westport Shipyard, now Westport LLC.
Seven citizens who spoke in favor of selling to Platypus cited the certainty of owning over leasing, the 75 new employees the company says it would hire, increased sales tax revenue and the lure of another “anchor business” in the port’s marine trades area.
“For far too long, our major export in Port Angeles has been our jobs and our children who seek those jobs,” said Dick Pilling, managing broker of Coldwell Banker Uptown Realty.
Representatives of the North Peninsula Building Association and Port Angeles Business Association also favored the sale.
But Calhoun said he would follow a “guiding principle” of no net loss of industrial-zone waterfront property and try to enshrine that in the port’s strategic plan.
Without it, he said, the port faced “a steady erosion to gentrification” of harbor front into convention centers, condominiums and retail space.
“Less working waterfront is the result we have seen over and over again,” he said.
Hallett said the opinions he’d received ran 10-to-1 against a sale but in favor of reaching “a relationship with the existing tenant without giving up public control of the property.”
Harbor-front land, he said, once was the exclusive domain of railroads and mill owners who stifled competition — and higher wages.
“Folks that came before us wanted good-paying jobs,” Hallett said.
“They wanted the ability to compete. They felt the public was being shut out of that process.
“The public has said, ‘We want to create opportunities for private business to compete and flourish.’
“If I don’t honor the reasons we have port ownership, then I don’t think I’m discharging the responsibilities you elected me to provide.”
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
