PORT ANGELES — The lead consultant for Port Angeles’ Waterfront and Transportation Improvement Plan said he will consider extending the deadline for one of the project’s contracts after two local sign makers called foul.
Request for bids for the contract, to make six prototype directional signs for downtown, went out Thursday. The deadline is noon Friday, and Port Angeles sign makers Jackson Smart and Mike Millar said that’s just simply not enough time.
“There’s no way humanly possible for that to happen,” said Smart, who owns Jackson’s Sign Art Studio.
“If it was a little sign for the front of a building, then that’s not a problem. But on a project of this scope, that’s not reasonable at all,” he said.
Millar, who owns ASM Signs, agreed.
“Seven days is hardly enough time to turn anything about,” he said.
Both said they are concerned that no local sign maker will be able to make the deadline.
But Sean Trujillo of Eagle Signs in Port Angeles said he disagrees.
Trujillo said he thinks they have been given enough time and that he plans to submit a bid.
“If you want it, you’ll get it in,” he said.
Nonetheless, Bill Grimes of Studio Cascade said he has heard of the concerns and plans to talk with city of Port Angeles staff Tuesday about whether the deadline needs to be extended.
Studio Cascade of Spokane is the lead consultant of the wide-ranging project, which seeks to revamp the waterfront, establish new directional signs and information kiosks, build two entryway monument signs and conduct a citywide transportation study.
“We could probably accommodate that [more time],” he said. “But we really need to make sure we have that [the signs] delivered to the city by March 14.”
Nathan West, city economic and community development director, said he would consider the change if the city doesn’t get enough bids.
He also said the city needs to get them in place as soon as possible because the $50,000 in city lodging tax money allocated for the signs for 2011 has to be spent this year.
The city has budgeted $225,000 for the directional signs.
Grimes said the necessity of making that deadline is the reason that the time frame for submitting bids isn’t longer.
Delivery of the six signs, which will later be followed by up to 44 more, was initially scheduled by the end of 2010.
That deadline was missed because the design process took longer than expected, Grimes said.
“There were some very good constructive comments” from the public, he said.
“We needed to make sure that the project responded to those.”
The Port Angeles City Council approved Dec. 7 the design of the signs, which consist of light-green slats topped by a depiction of a tribal canoe pulling past the Olympic Mountains.
Grimes said the call for bids wasn’t issued sooner because the draft construction documents had to be prepared.
Ted Groves, owner of Copy Cat Graphics in Port Angeles, said he won’t submit a bid because the project is too big for him to take on.
Steve Zenovic, a Port Angeles engineer working on the project, said the contract is also being advertised in the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce.
The signs were designed by AECOM of Orlando, Fla. Walkable and Livable Communities Institute of Port Townsend is supervising the company, which is also designing two entryway monument signs.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
