PORT TOWNSEND — A Port Ludlow builder has another year to begin work on a development planned to include 39 single-family homes.
Port Ludlow Associates first proposed two phases of the 80-house Olympic Terrace development in 2005, but the project was derailed by the recession, the group said.
Phase I, with 41 homes planned, is now in pre-construction, while Phase II has not begun because “real estate isn’t back where it needs to be,” company President Diana Smeland told the three Jefferson County commissioners Monday.
“There are no funds to build at this time,” Smeland said.
She added: “We are not seeing the amount of people we expected to buy new homes.”
After remarks by Smeland and Jefferson County Associate Planner David Wayne Johnson, the commissioners unanimously approved the extension for the deadline of the project’s final plat approval by one year, to June 28, 2017.
This requires the company to begin land construction by this time, which includes clearing the land and designating individual lot boundaries.
There is no construction schedule, but Smeland said she hopes the project will be completed by 2020.
“This is a lot of work, and it depends on the market,” Johnson said.
“It would be more work on our end if it were to expire.”
Should expiration occur, the process would start over, requiring the repetition of a permit process that has gone on for 10 years.
It also would be expensive for the company. The company has paid $23,377 in fees to the county. Those would be lost if the project expired.
The Jefferson County hearing examiner granted preliminary plat approval for Phases I and II in June 2005, with the final plat approved for Phase I in May 2007.
Phase II had yet to be finalized when the economic downturn of 2008 made doing so infeasible, according to the agenda request for Monday’s meeting.
In May 2012, the commissioners approved a one-year extension for plat approval. A year later, it approved a second extension to expire in June 2016.
If the land construction does not begin by June 2017 further extensions could be granted, according to County Administrator Philip Morley.
Smeland said the last home Port Ludlow Associates built was in 2006, after which time the company “went into survival mode” and did not restart the construction process until May 2012, when the plat request was set to expire.
The commissioners then granted a one-year extension, adding another three years in 2013.
On Monday, Smeland said it was essential for the company to get back into the business of selling affordable homes.
“Looking at the future, if we don’t get back into homebuilding, we may not be here,” she said.
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
