PORT TOWNSEND — The Port of Port Townsend is not the only suitor in new courtships of the state Department of Transportation to win over the Hood Canal Bridge graving yard project.
Just a few days after the department issued its request for statements of interest — and less than a week after the state abandoned the Port Angeles graving yard project — proposals are streaming in.
“We’ve received responses from Grays Harbor, a couple of sites on the Peninsula, and a couple of sites in the Seattle and Tacoma area,” said Patrick Clarke, Transportation’s floating bridge and special structure design manager.
The feelers by e-mail and telephone from several private organizations and port agencies across the region are unofficial, Clarke said.
“Right now there is an outside panel that is being assembled to help review the sites,” Clarke said.
“We listed some criteria in our (request for proposals), and we will be looking at those and any other desirable features.
“We have to sit down and look at each site.”
Possible PT bid
Among those sites might be one in Port Townsend.
Port of Port Townsend commissioners are scheduled to meet Wednesday to discuss offering seven or more acres of Port-owned, industrially zoned waterfront south of the Boat Haven marina.
The onshore, concrete-lined dry dock would be used to build components — pontoons, anchors and road decks — for the Hood Canal Bridge’s eastern half, scheduled to be replaced in 2007 but likely to be postponed because of last week’s pullout by Port Angeles.
The Port commissioners will convene at 9 a.m. in the larger Point Hudson Marina Room, 130 Hudson St.
The meeting was moved to Point Hudson because an expected large audience turnout.
