PORT TOWNSEND — After receiving no response from the artists who designed the Tidal Bowl, the city has decided to take steps toward removing the sculpture from the downtown waterfront.
“Yes, we’re moving forward,” said Rick Sepler, city planner, on Wednesday.
“We’ve sent letters, sent e-mails and made phone calls with no response.
“They’re not interested in proceeding with us, and we’re in an awkward position, but we need to move forward.”
In a letter to the San Francisco artists, Doug Hollis and Charles Fahlen, City Manager David Timmons explained why city officials have decided to remove the Tidal Bowl, which is behind the Port Townsend Police Station.
“Despite everyone’s best intentions over the past 20 years, the area has evolved into nothing less than an eyesore, and we can no longer allow the status quo to remain,” Timmons said.
“It no longer can be viewed as a ‘celebration of place’ as it was envisioned.”
The contract, drawn up in 1987, specified that no changes could be made without the artists’ consent.
But at a 2008 meeting of the Port Townsend Arts Commission, Timmons said the structure could be condemned.
Public hearing
The Arts Commission soon will schedule a public hearing, which probably will be held later this month, so residents can comment on the decision to do something with the structure, Timmons said.
The commission will make a recommendation to the Port Townsend City Council before a final decision is made.
The city is planning to fill in the bowl — which also is known by various other names, such as Tidal Clock, the Jackson Bequest and the less affectionate Tidy Bowl — and create a more inviting place on the waterfront.
Tentative plans envision the creation of a stage with a circular seating area around it.
“The idea is to fill in the Tidal Clock and place a grade there,” Timmons said in October. “We will also put in some public amenities to make it more accessible.
“We’re not going overboard, just letting people enjoy going back there. It will be more of a usable space than just a hole.”
The bowl was intended to be a community gathering place when it was created in 1987 with a generous gift of $200,000 from Ruth Seavey Jackson.
Jackson, a member of a Port Townsend family with a seafaring tradition, wanted the town to have a piece of community art to celebrate the waterfront.
Currently the Tidal Park area, which includes the Wave Viewing Gallery and a section of land behind the police station, is being used as a dump for refuse.
The bowl was supposed to act as a tidal clock, with graduated layers around the bowl filling with water and marine life as the tide changed.
The project never worked as planned, and quickly became a bane to the city rather than a boon to the arts.
The bowl mostly collects wood debris as waves from Port Townsend Bay crash against the rocks at the entrance and trap garbage inside.
The wave-viewing gallery was supposed to have a special hood on top that played a chime as wind blew through the gaps.
“That never happened,” Sepler said.
The wave-viewing gallery has been partially shut down for almost a decade, because the pilings holding up the deck are structurally unsound.
Sepler, who has been working to fix the Jackson Bequest since 1990, said that the original concept was never completed in accordance with the artists’ vision.
“Compromises were made in the construction,” Sepler said.
He said that the wave-viewing gallery was built on rotting ferry dock pilings and that the bottom of the bowl wasn’t sealed properly.
Sepler said he doesn’t blame the artists or the contractors, or anyone in the city.
He sees it as a project that was doomed for several different reasons, and now, regardless of how it got to where it is, it needs to be dealt with.
“The bottom line is we’ve been working diligently for over a year to fix this,” Sepler said.
“The best solution we have is moving the wave gallery ashore and filling in the clock.”
In his letter to the artists, Timmons said the city wished to preserve the history of the clock by completing some type of etching in the area explaining the story of the Jackson Bequest.
However, no tidal features will remain.
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Reporter Erik Hidle can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at erik.hidle@peninsuladailynews.com.
