PORT ANGELES — Port of Port Angeles commissioners have agreed to spend $46,855 to have an Everett engineering company revise bid documents for a planned $1.8 million self-service, vessel wash-down facility that will be built at the port’s still-vacant Marine Trades Industrial Park.
Reid Middleton Inc. had estimated construction of the project at the 19-acre former K-Ply plywood mill site just west of downtown Port Angeles on Marine Drive would cost, as port Director of Engineering Chris Hartman put it, a “staggering” $2.46 million.
The estimate “was significantly higher than what was included in the port’s capital budget and more than can be currently justified,” he said in the report to the board.
“We ended up with a Cadillac that was far too expensive,” he explained Monday at the port commissioners’ meeting. “We, as a staff, have to own that.”
Commissioners and staff Monday repeatedly used the metaphor.
“We didn’t indicate we wanted the Chevy model,” Commissioner Colleen McAleer said.
Hartman said Tuesday that Reid Middleton should have been better managed by port staff as they put together estimates for the project.
Hartman said the company’s estimate for full construction was $1.52 million when 60 percent of it was designed and was $2.46 million when fully designed.
“That’s where we built our initial capital budget, on that [lower] estimate,” he said. “Where things went awry was, we got blindsided a bit about the construction cost.”
A Reid Middleton company official did not return a call for comment late Tuesday afternoon.
The project cost is $1.6 million for construction alone, not including $200,000 for bid-document revisions, construction administration and a 5 percent construction contingency fund, Hartman said in his report to commissioners.
In anticipation of Monday’s meeting, port commissioners had reduced construction costs by $870,000.
Among the changes were deleting a $565,000 water treatment plant, opting instead to have effluent trucked to the port’s Boat Haven marina treatment facility about a mile west down Marine Drive.
Infrastructure for a treatment plant will be included that can be completed when funding is available.
“When there is enough use of that system, and the additional cost makes sense, then they’ll install that treatment facility,” Hartman said Tuesday.
Commissioners also shortened the wash pad, cutting its length nearly in half from 175 feet to 93 feet and saving $239,000.
That means the largest vessels carried by mobile lifts operated by Westport Shipyard and Platypus Marine, the wash-down facility’s two main users, will have to be moved around in stages once they are set on the wash pad for a complete cleaning rather than being set in one place while non-port employees clean the boats.
Hartman predicted the average-length boat will be 65 feet, although the yachts that non-port-tenant Westport builds are far longer than that, he said.
Port tenant Platypus, which as a boatbuilding and repair company will use the facility more than Westport, has a 300-ton lift.
Westport, with its own facility and purely a boatbuilder, has a 500-ton lift.
Hartman said a shoreline permit for the wash-down facility is being reviewed by the city Department of Community and Economic Development.
Grading and clearing permits also are needed from city public works.
Hartman expects permit approval will lead to construction that will begin in June and end in August.
When completed, “it’s not going to look like much,” Hartman said.
“It’s going to be a really large concrete pad with low points in the middle where water will wash down and drain into an underground tank.”
Users of the wash-down facility will operate it on their own in a manner not dissimilar from a self-service car wash, Hartman said, by wielding a wand-like hose — but one that pumps out 3,000 psi of water at 3.5 gallons per minute, Hartman said.
Fees for usage have not been set.
“We don’t anticipate the wash-down facility being a revenue generator for the port,” he added.
“It will be a bit of a loss leader, but at this point any boat repair company needs access to a wash-down facility.”
An anchor tenant for the industrial park that had been interested late last year in locating at the site has stepped back, Hartman added.
“Right now, it’s still a possibility, but it’s not as likely as it was,” Hartman said.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
