PORT ANGELES — Clallam Transit’s new $14.7 million Gateway transit center is awash in parking spaces, but just 30 of 174 are free — fewer than existed at the prime downtown site before the center was built — and most do not serve shoppers.
The upshot: For 144 of the parking spaces off Front Street and Railroad Avenue — not including seven handicapped spaces — you’ll have to pay to park there.
With today the first full day of summer, none of this sits well with longtime business owner Kevin Thompson, who says 30 free spaces at The Gateway transit center is too small a number, and who is upset that half of them are off Railroad Avenue, too far, he says, from the heart of downtown.
For downtown businesses, copious customer traffic begins with nearby, free parking, and that’s exactly what’s being lost, he said.
“Any time a new project comes in, I would think we would be increasing parking, because people are certainly not getting away from their vehicles,” Thompson said last week.
The transit center and its parking lots occupy the site of former parking lots once owned by Jack Heckman, who sold the property to Clallam Transit and now manages Clallam Transit’s parking lots.
It also now contains two fewer free spaces and one less permitted space that the lots once held.
Heckman is receiving $1,016 monthly in parking proceeds from the paid spaces.
He collects the fees under an interim agreement with Clallam Transit that’s related to the sale of that property, Clallam Transit General Manager Terry Weed said.
Those proceeds also cover only part of the Gateway parking area.
An overall agreement between Heckman, also owner of Olympic Bus Lines, and Clallam Transit is still being negotiated.
Deal rankles
But the fact that Heckman also is managing the lots under an agreement with Clallam Transit rankles Thompson.
Parking managed by the PADA was condemned for the project, Thompson said.
“He got one hell of a sweet deal, and the PADA got screwed,” Thompson, 48, said.
Both went to Roosevelt Middle School and Port Angeles High School together, though Heckman was a year ahead.
“I don’t know why he feels that way,” Heckman said. “We sold the property that my parents had that was supposed to be passed on to me, that generated income over 20 years. We literally have three, five-year contracts, and when those are gone, we’re done.”
Thompson is a longtime member and former president of the Port Angeles Downtown Association, which manages five downtown public parking lots under a contract with the city of Port Angeles.
He also owns Family Shoe Store three blocks west of the transit center — and the parking lots operated by his former classmate.
“Every parking place lost to us is a tremendous expense to us and the public,” Thompson said.
“Every parking space generates a couple thousand dollars a year in revenue.”
In fact, two free spaces where shoppers would park and a long-term permit for downtown business owners and their workers were eliminated for Clallam Transit vehicles.
They had been designated for the public and businesses, according to a city map that city Economic and Community Development Director Nathan West supplied Tuesday to the Peninsula Daily News, but as of Wednesday they were designated for Clallam Transit vehicles.
Heckman said a Clallam Transit maintenance person takes care of the transit center building, which contains a break room and a meeting room for agency employees. A ticket window has been built into the building, but is not being used.
Weed did not return calls about the change on Friday.
“Generally, we were trying to mimic what was there before, site-wide,” West said.
“It may not be space for space by any means. We just took a percentage and applied it across the site and took areas we thought might be appropriate for different uses.”
Heckman, whose father, Jim, ran the parking lot at the site before he did, said the parking-space distribution of his former parking lots were not based on a “set formula.”
“It was based on history, and the parking here for 20 years,” Heckman said.
“Originally it was based on need, the spaces that were used, the demand for permit parking that people asked for and having an adequate amount of free spaces that were not full all the time.”
But West and Heckman, who still operates 44 parking spaces next to The Gateway, said the matrix is flexible.
Future adjustments
“We’ll look at it, and if [free parking] turns out short, we’ll adjust it,” Heckman said.
“There hasn’t been one time when we’ve filled all the three-hour spaces, even on Memorial Day.”
Situated at the corner of First and Front streets at arguably the city’s busiest intersection, The Gateway was funded with $8.1 million in federal grants, $6.1 million in city funds and $500,000 in Clallam Transit money.
As what was planned there changed, the original price tag escalated more than threefold, from $4.5 million in 2002.
The Gateway includes rest rooms, dedicated bus lanes, a police outpost, and a towering, covered, open-air pavilion that opened Tuesday.
The facility’s footprint includes two fee-only underground parking garages.
There also are 90 spaces for maximum 24-hour parking that are completely filled for only about three weeks in July and August.
The largest block of parking at the site, it mainly serves ferry traffic from the Coho and Victoria Express ferries that leave from a block away across Railroad Avenue.
“For those 21 days, you’ve got to have it,” Heckman said.
Clallam Transit owns the transit center and property on which it sits.
The agency bid the west garage at $2.15 million and bid the transit lanes, plaza surface area and east garage at $4.77 million, Weed said.
Final costs will be determined “when all the change orders and delay issues are resolved,” Weed said early last week.
An unexpected but major structural repair to the east foundation wall of the pavilion delayed the opening and have complicated wrapping up the project.
“We’re still collecting information,” Weed said.
“It has to be worked out between the city, transit, the architect, engineers, construction manager and the contractor.”
The Gateway became fully functional just last week, and Thompson is already seeing signs of unrest among downtown entrepreneurs over parking, he said.
“I’m already getting complaints from some property owners on [Front] Street that there is not enough parking for customers,” he said.
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Staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
