PORT ANGELES — An entrepreneur who once dreamed of a $1.8 million zip-line park in the Olympic foothills now seeks support for a much bigger project: a $200 million aerial passenger tram from downtown Port Angeles to Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park.
Information from city, state and federal officials shows the project would face extensive environmental review and perhaps an act of Congress to get off the ground.
Dan Williams, who lives in Port Angeles, will host four weekly meetings on his proposed Port Angeles aerial tram from Thursday through Feb. 21 to gauge public opinion before he makes a decision on moving forward with the plan in March.
Williams hopes to see the tram operating by 2020.
“We are looking for the welcomeness of the community to get behind this,” he said.
But Olympic National Park Superintendent Sarah Creachbaum, who has spoken with Williams about the proposal, said last week it faces a giant hurdle.
“We have [National Park Service] policy that prohibits those kinds of transportation systems in wilderness,” she said.
The federal Wilderness Act, which governs activities within the park, does not allow a “commercial enterprise” or “mechanical transport” in such areas.
“Any action that’s proposed in a national park has to be analyzed in the environmental impact statement,” Creachbaum said. “We would be concerned with any impacts on park resources.”
State and city officials would not comment last week on the specifics of the proposal until they receive permit applications.
But the state Department of Natural Resources said in 2013 it had strong reservations about Williams’ zip-line project, which he dropped in 2013.
And the city planning manager described possible concerns about the proposed tram’s shoreline effects.
National and city officials talked of the project needing extensive environmental review as part of the permitting process.
“It certainly might result in a significant level of environmental review, certainly if it involves the national park,” said Nathan West, city community and economic development director.
“It would certainly be at the federal level as well as the state level.”
Williams sees his proposed the 10.6-mile tram, a series of gondolas traveling by cable, as an attraction that would exponentially expand the North Olympic Peninsula’s economy.
He believes it would make Port Angeles a world-class tourist destination, open the park to a vastly increased number of visitors year-round and reduce the park’s carbon footprint by cutting traffic up Hurricane Ridge Road.
The gondolas, carrying 2,300 to 12,000 people a day 340 days a year, would begin somewhere downtown near Port Angeles Harbor at a still-unspecified location, he said.
The tram would go to state DNR property in the foothills of the Olympics at the site where Williams had planned his aborted zip line.
Amenities such as a restaurant could be at the DNR site, he said.
And the downtown terminal “could include aerial attractions and amenities such as an indoor wave pool, amphitheater and convention center to name a few,” according to the Facebook page for Port Angeles Aerial Tram, of which Williams is the chief operating officer.
“The sky’s the limit,” Williams said Friday.
The project would be in two phases, according to the project’s Facebook page.
Phase one would be a 4.3-mile tram ride from downtown Port Angeles to land managed by DNR near Little River Road.
Phase two “upon congressional approval” would be a 6.5-mile tramway from the foothills to Hurricane Ridge inside the national park.
Williams envisions the entire trip taking about 30 minutes: approximately 11 minutes to the foothills and 17 minutes from there to Hurricane Ridge.
Williams said two companies are competing to build the project that may end up working together on it: gondola and cable-car manufacturer Doppelmayr Garaventa Group of Austria and Leitner-Poma of America Inc., which Williams said built the Poma lift at Hurricane Ridge.
Williams said his board of directors consists of executive assistant Shelly Simpson, secretary-treasurer Brooks A. Williams and certified public accountant David R. McHugh.
Eight remaining open positions will be determined “based upon the strategic implementation of the Port Angeles Area Tram’s Industry Development Plan (solicitation application process),” he said in an email.
“We also have a long list of advisers and consultants, attorneys and specialty contractors that are under [non-disclosure agreements] and cannot be disclosed at this time.”
Williams describes himself as a consultant who develops business plans for cruise ships and ship lines and identifies ecotourism opportunities for his clients.
He said he is conducting a $3 million to $5 million feasibility study on the project and has spent “less than $1.5 million and more than hundreds of thousands” on the project so far that came from the $1.4 million he raised for the zip-line park.
“As of [Friday], we are funded to present this to PA over the next couple of months,” he said Saturday.
He said the tram would be run by a nonprofit community foundation he would head that would donate tram revenues to community causes.
The zip line, which Williams also had touted as an economic gold mine for the area, would have been created through a company named Green Planet Zipline Inc., of which he was co-owner.
The Washington secretary of state’s website lists Green Planet Zipline as having been inactive since August 2013.
“Inactive means they are currently dissolved,” Pam Floyd, director of the corporations division of the state Secretary of State’s Office, said Friday.
Williams said he will reactivate the company’s business license if the tram project gets underway.
The $1.8 million, zip-line-eco-park was planned to be built on 40 acres of commercial forest leased from the state Department of Natural Resources off Little River Road.
It received a Clallam County conditional-use permit in December 2009.
Williams abandoned it in 2013 when his permit expired and then-Hearing Examiner Chris Melly, now a Clallam County Superior Court judge, denied him an extension.
Williams said breaking his hip in a car wreck forced him to stop working on the project. He discarded plans for a zip line on the West End that he said were dependent on the success of the Port Angeles project.
Melly in his ruling cited the lack of progress and DNR’s stance.
DNR Olympic Region Manager Susan Trettevik said in an email that was part of the permit hearing record that “there are many areas of serious concern for DNR that remain unresolved.
“We do not currently expect to enter into a leasing agreement regarding this project in the near future.”
Williams said then that he agreed with the judge.
“The project is dead on the Olympic Peninsula,” he said.
“We can’t recommit funding to Port Angeles.”
The tram, however, has funding, according to Williams.
“Funding is not a problem,” he said.
“I know where it’s coming from, but I can’t tell you out loud until we determine the feasibility.”
Williams would not name the investors, saying their identities were shielded by nondisclosure agreements.
“I have a commitment of funding if it gets past the next few tiers of civic rollout,” he said.
Stephanie Burkhart, a National Park Service spokeswoman, said Friday a final decision on a tram project that included Olympic National Park would be made by Chris Lehnertz, regional director of the Park Service’s San Francisco-based Pacific West Region.
Williams said he is not involved in legal and permit-related aspects of the project.
The tram company’s lawyers and lobbyists would try to make the Hurricane Ridge connection work and perhaps try to change federal law, he said.
Williams said he has outlined the project to U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer, a Gig Harbor Democrat and a Port Angeles native whose 6th Congressional District includes Clallam and Jefferson counties.
“Rep. Kilmer is always enthusiastic about hearing from folks who have ideas about creating jobs on the Peninsula,” said Jason Phelps, Kilmer’s spokesman, in an email Friday.
“Kilmer met with advocates for the project and will continue to track it as the proposal is developed.”
Williams said he has lots of local support for the project, including from the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe.
“The Elwha tribe has given its full support and endorsement of the aerial tram,” he said.
But Elwha Tribal Chairwoman Frances Charles said Friday that while tribal officials have discussed the project with Williams, they have not taken a stand.
“We just find his proposal to be interesting, so we are just waiting as well and really have no position at this time on it,” she said.
If the park connection doesn’t work, Williams wants to build only the 4.3-mile tram from downtown to the foothills at the base of the park.
Joe Smillie, a spokesman for the Department of Natural Resources and former Peninsula Daily News reporter, said Friday the DNR would not comment on the tram proposal until an application is submitted.
Smillie said DNR’s concerns about the abandoned zip-line project in the same area included increased traffic through the Lake Dawn and Black Diamond neighborhoods, the impact on off-road-vehicle trails and the zip line passing through buffers intended to protect the marbled murrelet, a threatened species.
City planner West also reserved judgment on the tram proposal until the city receives a permit application.
If the tram’s downtown terminus is built within 200 feet of the shoreline, the project would require extensive environmental review through the city and possibly the state Department of Ecology, West said Friday.
But he suggested it’s important to keep an open mind.
“It’s really important that we think about the opportunities that present themselves for Port Angeles and not suggest that anything is too big and too good for Port Angeles,” he said.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
