Port Angeles born again: Shutdown of mill wasn't the doom some predicted
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PORT ANGELES - When the big Rayonier pulp mill closed down here in 1997, Fred Michalscheck now admits, he almost panicked at losing his job.
"After 22 years working in the same place, you begin to wonder if you can do anything else," he says.
Today, Michalscheck runs a successful used-car business, The Other Guys, alongside Highway 101 east of town. And he wouldn't think of going back to the mill - even if he could.
Much the same goes for his friends in this handsome town perched dramatically on its narrow ledge between the Olympics and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. When Rayonier moved away and laid off 360 workers, many asked openly: What is a mill town without its biggest mill?
Four years later, Port Angeles is still groping for its identity. But the town has fared surprisingly well without Rayonier's jobs and industrial-strength influence.
This is no boomtown. There are no new office buildings or malls. At 18,397, its population has actually shrunk slightly since 1980, and its 7.5 percent unemployment is nearly twice the state rate. The average home price of $112,000 is $50,000 lower than neighboring Sequim.
And the economics could get worse. There are recurring rumors - firmly denied by the company - that the town could lose its other major mill, Daishowa, because of rising electricity prices.
Yet the community is amazingly upbeat.
"People didn't spend a lot of time wringing their hands," says Bart Phillips, former director of the local economic-development commission.
They owe their survival in part to Daishowa, which employs 300 people. But much of Port Angeles' resilience can be traced to a gradual shift in the local economy - from a blue-collar town dependent on timber, salmon and farming to a more recession-proof economy rooted in government and service jobs.
As the Clallam County seat and service provider for the northern Olympic Peninsula, Port Angeles has a solid base of living-wage jobs. Its largest employers, other than Daishowa, are a hospital, the school district, the county, the Coast Guard and Olympic National Park.
The town also benefits from its chemistry of history, geography and civic character.
Port Angeles owes its name to a little-known Spanish explorer, Don Francisco Elisa, who sailed by in 1791 and was so impressed with its natural harbor that he named it for the angels - Porto de Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles.
Its character can be traced in part to a failed experiment. In the 1880s, a charismatic lawyer, George Venable Smith, organized a cooperative colony, promising "free land, water and light" and "equal pay for women." By 1890, the colony had a working lumber mill and a dairy herd, and was advertising nationally for settlers.
By 1900, the commune had failed, and Port Angeles became a more traditional town heavily dependent on the lumber and pulp mills that lined its harbor. At one point, the mills employed nearly 1,000 people - one of every 10 residents.
Now the mills are succumbing, one by one, to a combination of factors: environmental restrictions, rising power costs, international competition and more. Some of the Rayonier millworkers found jobs at Daishowa or in Port Townsend. Others took welding classes and went to work at a new shipyard. Another took an auto-mechanics course and started a bicycle shop downtown.
"The millworkers had a strong support system," says Patty Hannah, who runs the local United Way. "The mill offered counseling and retraining, alcoholism treatment, family planning. And those things made a difference."
The town prides itself in its community spirit. Two years ago, people rallied behind a local doctor who had been accused of killing an infant child in his care. Last year, they rushed to help the family of a deputy sheriff shot to death by a mentally ill gunman.
Those qualities attract newcomers. Alan Turner was a corporate manager from New Jersey when he passed through about 20 years ago. Several years later, he bagged the corporate life and opened a downtown bookstore, Port Books and News, where he sells both new and used books, luring authors from around the region for evening readings.
"We'd only been here a couple of years when we had a fire at our house," Turner recalls. "Word got out, and people we'd never met stepped forward to help."
Employers such as the National Park Service, the schools and a community college attract a better-read work force than the mills, Turner notes.
As the mills have declined, Port Angeles has reclaimed much of its waterfront with a new harbor complex and park. Local officials have remodeled the old courthouse and built a new library.
The town still offers some unusual cultural life: lectures at the community college, a 60-year-old symphony, a fine-arts center. And Turner loves to take the ferry across the strait to Victoria, B.C., for the theater.
Still, locals readily acknowledge that Port Angeles is struggling to maintain its identity - or to find a new one.
Just up the hill from the waterfront is a retail landmark known across the peninsula as Swain's General Store. It's a bright-blue, supermarket-size emporium that sells logging shirts, jeans, rifle ammunition, fasteners by the bin, insulated boots, 100 kinds of hardware snaps and fireproof safes priced as high as $1,600.
After 50 years, Swains' future looked grim when a Wal-Mart opened a few blocks east.
So far, the local favorite is faring well, says Mike Mudd, who has worked there more than 20 years. "We adjusted."
Swains turned more to brand-name merchandise such as Pendleton, Woolrich and Levis, relying on quality and service while surrendering the low-end sales to the new competition.
Port Angeles' struggle, like its best-known store, is to adjust to the New Economy without selling its soul.
"The town is on a plateau," says John Brewer, publisher of the Peninsula Daily News in Port Angeles. "Obviously, the old days, when you could drop out of school, marry your high-school sweetheart and make a good living at the mill, are long gone. But people don't really know what they want to do next."
The town remains the gateway to Olympic National Park and its 4 million-plus annual visitors. Nearby Sequim has attracted increasing numbers of retirees. Local entrepreneurs are promoting sea kayaking and other "adventure tourism."
But tourism remains highly seasonal, not the kind of work likely to replace year-round jobs at the mills. Besides, Port Angeles is not sure it wants to be a tourist attraction.
That economic limbo is one of the reasons Bart Phillips left his job at the economic-development commission and took a similar job in Vancouver, Wash.
"Vancouver is finally coming into its own," he says. "There is enormous growth here.
"Port Angeles hasn't hit that point yet. There is a new-car dealership, a new cinema. They have a great cadre of professionals. But there's never enough money to do what needs to be done. Port Angeles is on the cusp."
Ross Anderson can be reached at 206-464-2061.