| GSA
says port of entry project still on schedule
By
Jack Kintner
Despite
the lack of visible progress in recent months the Peace
Arch port of entry redevelopment project is right on
schedule, according to Bill Lesh of the Government Services
Administration (GSA) regional office in Portland. “I
can’t give you an exact date, but we expect to begin
breaking ground in the spring, perhaps in May,” Lesh
said.
The
original time table for the project that was presented
at some of the initial scoping meetings two years ago
called for a design phase to begin in December 2005 and
last through July of 2006, for construction to begin
in September of 2006 and be completed in a little over
three years, just in time for the Vancouver Winter Olympic
Games in February of 2010.
Then
early in 2006 the Washington State Department of Transportation
(WSDOT) objected to the GSA plan because it lacked sufficient
room for adequate freeway exits and entrances at interchange
276, which serves D Street in Blaine.
An
accommodation was reached that involves replacing the
lighted intersections on D Street and on the west side
of the freeway where it becomes Peace Portal way with
traffic circles, or roundabouts.
Subsequently,
construction was scheduled to begin in 2007.
The WSDOT freeway project will be coordinated with
the GSA project, and according to its project website
has already been altered to reflect a construction
timeline that begins in the summer of 2007.
Despite
this delay, Lesh said that the project will be far enough
along for Customs and Border Protection personnel to
move into the 30,000-square-foot facility in a little
over two years.
“We’re
on schedule for initial occupancy in summer of 2009,” Lesh
said, “and
that means the administrative office, the secondary inspection
building and secondary inspection area.
There
will be some final work in the primary inspection lanes
after that, but we really want to be all done well before
the Olympic Games that winter.”
The
$30 million project will replace the current facility
and will expand its current three-acre footprint eastward,
taking a major piece out of one of Blaine’s oldest
neighborhoods primarily for a 72-car parking
lot.
The
area includes 13 residential units in the area between
the freeway, Peace Arch Park, Second and C streets. The
project also includes a 30,000-square-foot main building,
ten inbound inspection lanes and a 40-car covered secondary
inspection area.
“We’ve
purchased all of those properties in the residential
area and it’s just
now been vacated,” Lesh
said, adding that none of the structures
are for sale.
“We really don’t have the
time to negotiate all of that,” he said. The
GSA’s
archaeological assessment found houses
over a century old but found only one, the Morrison
House at Second and C streets, worthy of
consideration as being of historical value,
and it lies just outside the project’s
footprint.
Ranger
Jason Snow of Peace Arch State Park said that he thinks
there may be a couple of people who still have to completely
vacate the structures.
“They
have said they’re getting ready to begin
work soon, and asked us to inventory
the plants in the residential area to see if
we wanted to save any for the park, but
we’ve found very little we can
use,” Snow
said.
Lesh
said that there is currently no website for the Peace
Arch renovation, as it’s called, but that he will
have one up “soon.” The website
for the WSDOT interchange 276 project
is located at www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/I5. |
