PORT ANGELES — The Port of Port Angeles has gone to bid for the demolition of the defunct Peninsula Plywood mill on the waterfront just west of Valley Creek.
Commissioners John Calhoun and Paul McHugh voted Monday to authorize Executive Director Jeff Robb to solicit bids for the demolition of the 71-year-old plant. Commissioner Jim Hallett was absent.
The six-month demolition will cost between $1.4 million to $1.9 million, said Gary Wiggins, port director of engineering, planning and public works.
Port officials said the permitting process is well under way. The port hopes to reopen the site for economic development.
“We’re talking about millions of dollars here in investment in our port,” Calhoun said. “There’s no doubt about that.”
The mill first opened in 1941 as investor-owned Peninsula Plywood, later was sold to ITT Corp. and even later was purchased by an Alaska Native corporation that renamed it Kply.
Kply shut down in November 2007. The mill reopened as Peninsula Plywood in March 2010.
It closed last November after employing up to 159 workers and generating about $10 million in payroll. It owed the port, city of Port Angeles and state Department of Labor & Industries $2.4 million.
Equipment was auctioned off June 7.
“It’s the opinion of the staff is that it has exceeded its useful life, and therefore demolition is required to encourage an opportunity for economic development,” Wiggins said told commissioners.
The 19-acre site is being leased to Munro LLC for log storage under a lease that runs through March 2013. The logs are bound for China.
“We’re not pulling foundations and disturbing soil because we know that there’s some underlying contamination,” Robb said. “The challenge with that is that you’ve got to get the building out of the way so you can identify the contamination and mitigate it.
“That is a whole other project and a cost associated with it that won’t come cheap. We don’t talk in tens of thousands; we talk in hundreds of thousands to millions, potentially.”
Calhoun asked about the status of the demolition permits.
“We’ll be submitting a demolition permit to the city, and that should be very simple,” Robb said. “We have submitted a stormwater construction management plan to the [state] Department of Ecology, and we’d anticipate within the next 30 to 60 days having that in hand.”
The bids will come back to port commissioners before the countywide agency spends any money on the demolition. The un-budgeted cost would come from the general fund.
Demolition includes the 175-foot smokestack with the lettering “K Ply” on the side.
Before a bid is approved, the port would “want to ensure that we’ve got the final permit, which is stormwater from the Department of Ecology,” Robb said.
“That’s the only real permit that could hang us up a bit, but we think that we need to move forward.”
Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5072, or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
