PORT ANGELES — The streetscape of a commercial-residential neighborhood east of downtown will likely be spared a facade of prison-like barbed wire atop a chain-link fence.
The Border Patrol has agreed to soften the appearance of its yet-to-be-built, fenced-in North Olympic Peninsula headquarters at 110 Penn St., which borders East Front Street, officials with the city of Port Angeles, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Border Patrol said last week.
“At this point, we are not planning on using barbed wire,” Border Patrol spokeswoman Jenny Burke confirmed Friday, adding that the final design still must be approved by agency officials.
The construction project is being overseen by the Corps of Engineers.
“We are going to modify the contract to provide a much more visually appealing fence,” Corps Project Manager Michael Sangren told Public Works Director Glenn Cutler in an email Tuesday.
He cited the Clallam County Public Utility District fence at the utility’s Carlsborg storage facility — the former Costco store — as an example of a more acceptable structure.
“The design build contractor is actually taking pictures of the PUD fence as an example,” Sangren wrote.
“In conversation with the Office of Border Patrol, they have done these ‘nicer looking’ fences at other locations and understand the need to do so in Port Angeles.
“Also part of this modification is the addition of landscaping to the Highway 101 side of the project as well as the 70-foot buffer area at the top of the ravine.”
The renovation project remains slated for completion by April 14, despite the delay in start-up, Sangren said.
A temporary construction fence now rings the property, and two Blackhawk company trailers sit on the edge of the parking lot inside the barrier.
The Corps is renovating the former 19,000-square-foot Eagles lodge for the five-acre headquarters in a $5.7 million project contracted to Blackhawk Constructors LLC of San Antonio.
The installation still is expected to include offices, a fitness center, dog kennels, dog runs, a training room, an emergency generator, above-ground fuel storage tanks, temporary holding cells, a security system, a 40-foot radio tower and tall, downward-pointing, 24-hour lighting, Sangren said Friday.
The headquarters will accommodate up to 50 agents for a Border Patrol unit that covers Clallam and Jefferson counties and that now numbers 25 — up from just four compared with five years ago.
Border Patrol officials said they have outgrown their present quarters at the Richard B. Anderson Federal Building at 138 W. First St. in the heart of downtown Port Angeles.
The agency has denied a Peninsula Daily News Freedom of Information Act request and subsequent appeal for arrest statistics and the identities of those arrested, citing national security and privacy considerations.
“The priority mission of the Border Patrol is preventing terrorists and terrorists’ weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, from entering the United States,” according to the agency’s website, http://tinyurl.com/arldr.
Border Patrol officials have said there are no immediate plans to increase agent staffing and that the Border Patrol builds its headquarters facilities to accommodate 50 agents or 75 agents using standardized designs for facilities such as those in Grand Forks, N.D.
But unlike in Grand Forks, Blackhawk will modify the appearance of the Port Angeles headquarters by not including a 1-foot-high band of inward-sloping, jagged barbed wire surrounding the property, Burke said.
The height of the fence has not been determined, she said.
The design of the facility also will be different in that the headquarters will be a renovated structure, not an entirely new building.
The security fence is required to prevent unauthorized vehicles and pedestrians from entering the grounds of the headquarters, Sangren said.
A general outline of the revisions was worked out three weeks ago at a meeting of Sangren, city Planning Manager Sue Roberds, city Public Works Director Glenn Cutler, city Director of Community and Economic Development Nathan West, city Assistant Civil Engineer Roger Vess and two Blackhawk subcontractors, Roberds said.
The fence was the top issue, and the Corps was “quite amenable, right off the bat,” to changing the existing design, Roberds said.
Having property surrounded by barbed wire at a major commercial location would be “institutional” and “very unfriendly” she said.
“Maybe in Clallam Bay or Pelican Bay prison, that environment would be fine,” Roberds said.
“But we are talking about a very visible local representation in our community and something that would be very visible to everyone above it.”
Participants at the meeting earlier this month also discussed “muting” the colors of the building to make it blend in more with the surrounding area, Roberds said.
At the get-together, city officials also suggested that Sangren, on his way back to Seattle, examine the 7-foot, vertically barred iron fence that surrounds the PUD’s Carlsborg storage facility on U.S. Highway 101.
That fence is intended to protect “millions of dollars of equipment we have in there,” PUD spokesman Michael Howe said.
“Nobody ever worried about the height.”
Sangren took up city officials on their suggestion, snapping photos of the PUD fence on his way home.
“As a security fence, personally, I would like to see that better than chain link and barbed wire,” he said Friday.
The Corps cannot dictate to Blackhawk’s project manager “what we like or don’t like” but can specify the fence’s height and whether barbed wire must be used, Sangren said.
“We wait for him to submit his submittal and evaluate that and go from there,” Sangren said.
A Blackhawk employee at the site 10 days ago referred all questions about the project to the Corps of Engineers.
Cutler said he also expects greenery will be added to the site to make it more visually pleasing from East First Street traffic and residences above the property, which is on the city’s eastern city limit about a block from the busy Golf Course Road intersection.
“I feel confident the Corps of Engineers is willing to work with the city and end up in a win-win situation,” Cutler said.
The extended process for deciding on the design of the fence has not factored into Blackhawk’s monthlong delay in beginning construction, Sangren said.
“Just technical stuff, plumbing, wiring, structural” is holding up the project, he said, describing the issues as “minor technical things.”
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.