Town embarks on a voyage of heritage

The $10 million Northwest Maritime Center, which will include exhibit space, a chandlery and library, meeting rooms, a woodshop and other features, is being designed for habitat protection and energy efficiency.


		Gilbert W. Arias / P-I
	The Northwest Maritime Center will be just south of the Port Hudson Marina, a safe harbor for small craft like this sailboat.

Organizers have raised half the money needed, and construction begins this fall on a new dock, the centerpiece of an ambitious project designed to showcase Port Townsend's maritime trades and help the public better understand Puget Sound.

"It's not all about boats," said Joe Wheeler, former executive director of Centrum, Port Townsend's cultural and arts organization. "It's a project that will reflect the town's rich maritime culture and historical preservation values, but it will also be good for business. ... The Maritime Center will celebrate what this town is, and will celebrate Puget Sound as a precious resource."

The site's 1930s wooden dock, sinking into the bay and off-limits to the public, partially burned when seagull guano caught fire in the late 1980s. It will be demolished in mid-October to make way for a 290-foot replacement, marking the first phase of construction on the two-acre site at the north end of Water Street, next to Point Hudson Marina.

The new dock cleared federal and state environmental and shoreline management hurdles, architects and scientists said, thanks to an innovative design that will meet educational and recreational aims while protecting marine habitat.

Among other things, the design allows adequate light for eelgrass growth to sustain marine life, and features a saltwater heat pump that will allow the center to be heated and cooled by water from Port Townsend Bay.

The dock is expected to be completed by May, with the center slated to open in 2005.

The environmental obstacles -- including cleanup of the contaminated site -- weren't the only ones faced by supporters. Some kind of maritime center first was suggested 15 years ago. The town of 8,200 has waged a 13-year battle to save the current site for public access, thwarting previous plans for condos or a hotel.

Cleanup costs for the site, a bulk oil terminal from 1927 to 1989, were uncertain, and public and private buyers were wary. But in 1990, a local developer signed a purchase-sale agreement, and proposed to build a 50-unit condominium complex there.

"That was the straw that broke the camel's back," said Dave Robison, executive director of the Northwest Maritime Center who had just taken the job of city planner.

Robison recalls a divided community, with some protective of private property rights and others marching down the street in "No Condo!" T-shirts.


		Gilbert W. Arias / P-I
	At the Point Hudson Boat House, Brian Wentzel uses a bucking iron and a hammer to fasten copper rivets while working on a Danish boat built in 1924.

There also was a desire that any development be consistent with historical preservation. In 1976, the National Park Service designated much of Port Townsend, north of the ferry dock and below the town's prominent bluff, as a National Historic Landmark.

Citizens who recall the fight in 1990 say the new center is a welcome victory both for what it will be and what it prevented. Former Mayor Brent Shirley recalls a city-imposed moratorium in 1990 that ultimately killed the development and prompted civic soul-searching: "Sometimes you have to make the hard decision."

In 1997, Thomas Oil reduced the price for the property from $1.6 million to $950,000 -- and Shirley, who left office four years earlier, joined forces with Robison and Alicia Alvarez, then director of the Wooden Boat Foundation, to galvanize local support to buy it.

Shirley and four friends each signed $5,000 notes to seal a $25,000 purchase-sale agreement. The community raised $600,000, which helped persuade the state to award a $329,000 grant.

"Saving the property for public access was the number one goal; the vision of what was most appropriate for the site came later," Shirley said. "It is a stunning site that would have been gone forever. ... Now we have the maritime corridor many wanted at that end of town."

In a town where marine trades make up the third-biggest industry behind tourism and the local pulp mill, the center is considered an economic driver as well as a force that will preserve civic heritage and Puget Sound itself.

"The entire culture of the Northwest is built on celebrating water," said Ernie Baird, who hitchhiked to Seattle from Chicago in 1968 and found his niche in Port Townsend, working on classic wooden boats.

"Asking someone in marine trades about the Maritime Museum is like asking a fish about water quality," said Baird, now owner of Baird Boat Co. Inc., a wooden boat builder and refurbisher.

"It may not decide his next meal, but it will have a great deal to do with the ultimate quality of his life."

Chris Kluck, executive director of the Wooden Boat Foundation in Port Townsend, which will become the center's anchor tenant, calls Port Townsend "a living museum," a town with a working waterfront where people still earn their living applying marine techniques and skills that are disappearing elsewhere.

Kluck and others say the center will help reflect and preserve those trades by educating the public about their value -- and viability.

For Carol Haase, the effort is about saving the land but also a way of life. The longtime owner of Haase & Co./Port Townsend Sails has survived as an employer and highly sought sailmaker despite foreign competition. The loft's orders come from all over: the Northwest, Alaska, Florida, Annapolis, Md., and the Bay Area.

"People's lives are an expression of their dreams here," Haase said. "We can make these things ourselves; everybody suffers ultimately if jobs are sent to Sri Lanka, South Africa, China, Mexico ....

"Port Townsend is so remarkable, the quality and commitment and uniqueness of the entrepreneurship here ... But we all see how precious and precarious it is, and if we don't preserve marine art and craft, and teach respect for the environment, it will be a tragic loss for the future."