Kalakala may move to Port Angeles

Published 8:48 pm Saturday, October 16, 2010

PORT ANGELES — The owner of the 74-year-old ferry Kalakala wants to bring the dilapidated boat to Port Angeles, restore it and make it the centerpiece of a new waterfront development.

It’s the latest proposal from Steve Rodrigues, a Tacoma-area contractor and investor who has owned the streamlined, art deco-style ferry for the past six years.

Rodrigues told the Peninsula Daily News that the development would include a marina, stores, condos and apartments, and a tourist “welcome center.” The Kalakala would be remodeled into a floating restaurant and special-events center.

The idea is similar to one Rodrigues earlier proposed for the Tacoma waterfront, where the Kalakala has been moored for five years. He also sought to make the boat an attraction in Seattle.

His proposals gained little traction and no funding despite Rodrigues’ attempts to interest potential investors, Tacoma city officials, Pierce County, the state and the U.S. government.

Rodrigues met earlier this week with Port Angeles City Manager Kent Myers and attended a meeting of the Harbor-Works Development Authority, which plans to direct development of the former Rayonier pulp mill site about two miles east of where Rodrigues would dock the Kalakala.

“He still has not secured his financing,” Myers said afterward, adding that the discussion was “very general in nature.”

“We told him once he gets his financing in place and the property is under escrow and secured, to come back and visit with us,” Myers said.

Rodrigues told the newspaper Wednesday that he wants to buy 400 feet of shoreline frontage and an acre of uplands from Gerald Austin and Jack Glaubert of Port Angeles.

Rodrigues said restoration of the Kalakala would cost $11.2 million over three years and a floating-dock marina less than $2 million over two years. He eventually wants to build condos on the upland site.

Asked whether he has the money for the project, he said, “I have more than enough to know that we are going to fully proceed with the project.”

The newspaper said Rodrigues would not say how much cash he has on hand.

Austin said Wednesday that “we are nowhere” in discussions about Rodrigues buying the land.

“He is still working on it. He wants us to give him the property, and he will get the money through a grant,” Austin said.

On his Web site, Rodrigues said he hopes to get a $700,000 grant from the National Parks Service, and will seek grant money next year from the state.

From 1935 to 1967, the Kalakala — its name means “Flying Bird” in the Chinook tribal language — ferried cars and people between Seattle and Bremerton, and Port Angeles and Victoria, British Columbia. The distinctive vessel became an icon for Seattle and a popular attraction for locals and tourists.

After its retirement, it became a cannery in Kodiak, Alaska, before being refloated and returned to Seattle in 1998 by sculptor Peter Bevis.

Various proposals to restore the boat never panned out, and Rodrigues bought the boat at auction in 2003.