PORT ANGELES — After listening to three hours of sometimes heated testimony Monday, Port of Port Angeles commissioners unanimously agreed to earmark 113 airport-area acres for a sawmill.
The commissioners told the Port’s lawyer to negotiate a purchase and sale agreement for consideration at a future meeting.
But a state-mandated environmental review process at Port Angeles City Hall stands between the Port’s Monday vote that designated the property as “surplus” and approval of a 44-acre mill to process alder.
More than 100 people — many of them opponents of the mill’s location — crowded into a meeting room at The Landing mall to hear officials of Washington Alder, Port Angeles City Hall representatives and a group calling itself the Dry Creek Coalition testify on the company’s plans.
The testimony was punctuated by frequent applause from the standing-room-only crowd.
Port Angeles Hardwood LLC, a division of Mount Vernon-based Washington Alder, wants to build the $23 million alder processing plant identical to one it has operated in Mount Vernon since 1998.
The sawmill would have employ 95 people and have a payroll of $3.5 million.
It would be located on 113 acres between William R. Fairchild International Airport and Edgewood Drive, formerly owned by the Critchfield family and now known as the South Airport Industrial Properties.