PORT ANGELES — The Port of Port Angeles is on the brink of obtaining an anchor tenant at the port’s new Marine Trades Industrial Park, port officials said.
At their business meeting Tuesday, port commissioners learned that officials of the prospective marine trades firm could decide by Sept. 19 if the former KPly plywood mill property on Marine Drive will work as their new industrial site.
On Wednesday, neither Chris Hartman, port engineering director, nor John Nutter, the port’s director of finance and administration, would identify the company while talks were ongoing.
“All indications are they are very excited about this potential opportunity,” Nutter said.
The port completed a $7 million environmental cleanup in September 2016 at the 19-acre Marine Drive parcel, located immediately west of the downtown core.
“Hopefully, we could hear something as soon as two weeks,” Nutter said at the meeting Tuesday.
Nutter said Wednesday he based the estimate on meetings that company officials have scheduled “at which point they anticipate making a firm decision,” and then extended the window for that decision to Oct. 5.
Nutter said the new tenant, which would be industrial, would occupy “in the neighborhood of 5 acres” on the 19-acre site.
He said he did not know if the building would be one or two stories tall.
“A number of details are not ironed out yet,” he said.
“They have to decide what their needs will be, and then we have to decide what we would provide and what they would build on their own.”
A draft 2018 capital budget that Hartman presented to commissioners Tuesday included $250,000 for site development of the Marine Drive property, a major portion of which would need the addition of fill to build up the parcel to sub-grade.
The port also will start adding utilities.
“We want to make it as ready as we can,” Hartman said.
The capital projects plan rates individual expenditures for improvements from 1 to 5 according to job-creation potential, with 5 presenting the highest probability of creating jobs.
The Marine Trades Industrial Park and the Multi-Tenant Industrial Building at William R. Fairchild Industrial Park were the only improvement projects among 11 in the capital budget to score 5.
Hartman said the port’s long-range capital expenditure plan includes $2.5 million in 2019 and $3.5 million in 2020 to develop about 9 acres of the 19-acre site.
Industrial park site development is a tiny portion of the $10 million in capital expenditures the commissioners will consider approving later this fall.
They include $4.3 million in solid waste treatment and site development costs, $800,000 for industrial building at the airport industrial park and $2.5 million for vessel washdown facilities at the Marine Drive site.
“When you have a neighborhood of marine trades industrial companies, it becomes an asset for all of them,” Nutter said of the washdown apparatus.
“We are looking to expand into the larger yacht world,” he added.
Other proposed expenditures for 2016 from among 32 line items include $250,000 for the purchase of industrial property, $375,000 for a hydraulic loader, $150,000 for elevator repair-upgrades at the main administrative building, $35,000 for two lawn mowers and $30,000 for a service van.
Other expenditures include $170,000 for gates and security fences, $70,000 for laundry facilities, $50,000 for terminal building renovation, $30,000 for signs and $20,000 to replace a restaurant cooler.
The $6 million allocated to develop the Marine Drive site as a “future project” in the budget plan is by far the largest sum dedicated to capital projects.
The port is trying to be cautious about committing funds to the site until tenants have committed to going there, Hartman said.
“Due to the time frame, it’s not responsible to put more money into it next year, simply because we won’t be ready to do anything,” he said Wednesday.
Commissioners will review the capital budget further at their regular Sept. 19 meeting.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
