By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES – The years-long effort to find the right location for a joint public safety facility that would house the County’s Emergency Operations Center and a new 911 call center may be over.
A 7-acre parcel of undeveloped land in the 2000 block of Edgewood Drive, just south of Airport Garden Center, has been selected as potentially the perfect spot.
According to project consultant Dale Jackson, the location appears to check all the boxes.
“So, it’s near the airport, which was one of our criteria. Fairchild Airport is FEMA’s designated receiving airport for emergency services and supplies in the event of a major disaster. So we wanted to have our EOC year that, just for logistics reasons, to be able to coordinate better. We did a full geological assessment on the site. It’s a very stable site seismically. So, that’s a key criteria. And we’ve done a complete environmental assessment and found no contamination on the site. So that’s also a key criteria.”
The property is in the County, but it’s also in the City’s Urban Growth area, which means the City could annex it in the future if they choose to. The full 7+ acres is not needed for the facility, so the County has subdivided it into 2 properties of about 3.8 acres each. If approved, the eastern portion will be used for the joint facility.
The next step is for both the City Council and County Commissioners to come together on April 10 to approve it.
“Both legislative bodies are planning a joint meeting, and they need to look at all of the information that we’ve developed and, based on that, they’ll make a final decision that this is the site that they really want to select. But, until they do that, we won’t be going forward with the project. They, like I said, for any number of reasons, might decide that they want to look at other properties. But our recommendation at this point is that we go forward with this property. So, it’ll be up to them.”
As we reported 2 weeks ago, Clallam 2 Fire Rescue has determined that they have to replace two of their fire stations, including the one at Dry Creek. We asked Jackson if the idea of using the other parcel for a Clallam 2 fire station had been floated.
“We talked very briefly with Fire District 2, and it sounded like Fire District 2’s plans were far enough out in the future that it didn’t merit trying to plan to do anything jointly at this point. That doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t welcome looking at that in the future, though.”
(Satellite photo of proposed location south of Airport Garden center)