Gateway Groundbreaking Ceremony

The Gateway groundbreaking ceremony was right on schedule this morning at 9 a.m. About fifty people attended. Speeches were given by Mayor Karen Rogers, City Manager Mark Madsen and Kevin Thompson, President of the Downtown Association, among others. The event was also attended by:

Members of Clallam Transit, Primo Construction, several former Port Angeles mayors, members of the City Council, Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Association; and representatives from the offices of Norm Dicks and Patty Murray.

According to the City of Port Angeles website, the construction chaos won't start getting worse until around mid-August. Their website will continue to provide updated information on Gateway. This site also has photos of the groundbreaking ceremony.

Gateway Center: New Information

This Wednesday, May 9th at 7:30 a.m. there will be a meeting of the Port Angeles City Council and Clallam Transit, in the City Council Chambers. They will be providing updated information about Gateway Center.

If you live, work or shop anywhere near downtown Port Angeles, the Gateway Project is going to affect YOU.

Please attend this meeting. Forewarned is forearmed.

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UPDATE: There was a meeting at the City Council Chambers this morning. The meeting included personnel from Clallam Transit and Primo Construction, the company handling the Gateway project.

They stated that right now there are still more questions than answers, but there will be periodic meetings to keep everyone updated. Tentatively there'll be another meeting in June. They're expecting to start construction next month, and they're hoping to be done by “late summer” of 2008.

The project will include a 2-story parking garage, bus lanes, a clock tower, a plaza area, and a transit terminal building with restrooms. AND, they also said the entire project is funded.

The City has plans for mitigating the parking problems. This includes creating temporary additional parking spaces on Oak and Cherry Streets, and running a trolley during peak periods. The trolley would take people from the parking areas to downtown shopping, the ferries, etc.