PORT ANGELES — Most of the fencing around The Gateway will be brought down this morning, but the $14.7 million downtown transit center won’t be opened just yet.
The fencing will be removed around the project’s west parking garage and transit lane but will remain around the project’s pavilion because a structural repair beneath that building has yet to be approved.
Glenn Cutler, Port Angeles public works director, said there will be a ceremony once the entire project is open.
“I guess you can call this a soft opening,” he said, referring to most of the fencing coming down.
Removing the fencing around the parking garage and transit lane will allow Clallam Transit to open the project to public parking, move bus stops from Oak Street to that location and allow the transit agency to begin using a break room for bus drivers.
Clallam Transit General Manager Terry Weed said the transit agency is still a few weeks away from making that happen.
Removing the fencing also will allow Duane Benedict, Port Angeles Police Department’s downtown resource officer, to move into his new office at The Gateway, which is a joint project of the city of Port Angeles and Clallam Transit.
Police Chief Terry Gallagher said a date for Benedict to begin using the office hasn’t been determined.
The fencing can be removed because the city approved occupancy for those parts of the project earlier this week.
Parking
Weed said Clallam Transit also will have to go through what he described as a “bureaucratic exercise” to open parking to the public and begin using the transit lane.
“We have to make sure with the contractor and architect that all the i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed,” he said.
“There is nothing that needs to be done other than mundane stuff.”
Weed said pay stations need to be installed at The Gateway for the west parking garage to be used by the public. He said he didn’t know when Jack Heckman, owner of Heckman Motors Inc., which will manage the parking at The Gateway, will install the pay stations.
Posted signs say that parking will cost $11 a day in numbered stalls. Other stalls will be free for three hours.
Weed said Clallam Transit and Heckman are updating the parking agreement, but he expects the prices will be the same as posted.
The Gateway has a total of 169 parking spaces. The parking area underneath the pavilion will remain closed until a repair for the cracking underneath a horizontal concrete beam is approved and conducted.
Bus routes
Weed said it will be a couple of weeks before buses will begin stopping at The Gateway.
“We need to decide which route goes where,” he said.
“We need to make sure the appropriate signage is up . . . There are relatively minor things to do.”
The routes that currently stop at Oak and Front streets — including the Joyce, Sequim and Forks routes and four routes within Port Angeles — will instead stop at The Gateway.
Weed said the public will be given about a week’s notice before those routes are adjusted.
Heckman’s Olympic Bus Lines will also stop at The Gateway, for a nominal fee, he said.
Cutler said the city is still not satisfied with information provided by Bright Engineering Inc. of Seattle on a repair it has proposed for the cracking discovered in a foundation wall of the pavilion last September.
The cracking has put the completion of the project on hold. It was scheduled to be completed last November.
“We’re asking for clarification on calculations and how it’s applicable to the (city) code,” he said but declined to elaborate.
The Gateway is paid for with $8.1 million in state and federal grants, $6.1 million in city funds and $500,000 from Clallam Transit.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
