The Northwest Maritime Center in Port Townsend opens to the public for the first time tomorrow, marking the realization of a decade-long dream—and a substantial investment in the region’s maritime future.

The 26,000-square foot facility, located on the waterfront next to Point Hudson Marina, will open its Chandler Maritime Education Building and outdoor public commons at 5 p.m. Thursday to coincide with the start of the annual Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival. A second building, the Maritime Heritage and Resource Building, which will house a chandlery and administrative offices, is expected to open next year.

The center will offer classes, meeting space, boat storage, a boatshop and a pilothouse with navigation and communication equipment. The goal, said project manager Dave Robison, is to enable people to learn about the town’s maritime heritage in various ways, whether that means taking sailing lessons, enrolling in a seminar or stopping by the center to watch a boatbuilder at work. 

“I think the Northwest Maritime Center is an anchor for Port Townsend and the entire Puget Sound region,” Robison said. “We’re really building on a rich maritime legacy in Port Townsend and we’re building for tomorrow.”

The main floor of the education building will house a boatshop that functions as a living exhibit, allowing visitors to watch boats being built and restored. The tradespeople who use the space will be expected to be there often and interact with visitors, Executive Director Stan Cummings said.

“This is a unique type of space,” he said. “What we’re putting on display are not artifacts, but activities.”

The center's boatshop will serve as a living exhibit, allowing visitors to watch marine tradespeople at work

And though the center is the new home for the Wooden Boat Foundation, which is moving from the cupola house it previously occupied at the other end of Point Hudson Marina, Cummings said the facility will encompass a broad range of marine trades.

“It’s contemporary maritime life as much as it is traditional,” he said. “We’re just as interested in the cruise ships and the tugs and barges and the container ships that are going by our doors as we are wooden boats.”

The center visibly transforms Port Townsend’s waterfront, connecting Point Hudson Marina to the rest of the downtown by filling in the vacant space that previously separated the two areas. To many old-timers, it does something even more important: ensures that a prime piece of waterfront property upholds the town’s heritage, rather than simply being auctioned off to the highest bidder.

David King, a Port Townsend city council member and immediate past president of the center’s board of directors, said when he moved to Port Townsend in 1978, the town felt more like a tourist community and retirement area. There was an active community of people working in marine trades, he said, but they were isolated and not visible.

“The town had turned its back on the water,” said King. “People hadn’t really valued the waterfront.”

The new center, King said, strengthens Port Townsend’s maritime community by providing a focal point and boosting the community’s credibility. It helps ensure that visitors can have an authentic experience that reflects Port Townsend’s unique culture, he said, “so instead of just getting an ice cream and buying a mug, (tourists) can do something more meaningful.”

The center is also expected to be an economic driver for the town of about 9,000. With the marine industry providing about 450 jobs in Port Townsend, the center will provide an important venue for people to learn skills they can apply in maritime industry work, Robison said.

“The marine trades are a very vital part of our local economy and the character of our town,” he said. “What we’re really trying to do is invest in the future so that Port Townsend is branded as a center for contemporary and traditional maritime arts. It’s all about the people that work along the waterfront, and about our heritage.”

The centerpiece of the Northwest Maritime Center's public outdoor space is a compass rose comprising more than 1,500 pavers engraved with the names of supporters.

The idea for the center originated in the late 1990s with the Wooden Boat Foundation, which wanted to establish a facility for year-round education and programs. The waterfront property where the center now sits was then a former oil terminal owned by Thomas Oil. Several proposals floated for the site, including a condominium development and a drugstore, had been defeated in the face of intense opposition from the community.

When Thomas Oil reduced the price for the two-acre property from $1.6 million to $950,000 in 1997, the foundation decided to buy it. A new nonprofit organization, the Northwest Maritime Center, was formed to take over the project.

The group kicked off its fundraising effort at the 1999 Wooden Boat Festival, selling symbolic square foot chunks of the waterfront property for $50 each. It raised $600,000 by the end of the year and with some additional state funding, purchased the property in 2000.

Following a $500,000 clean-up of the contaminated site two years later, a new dock was built to replace an old wooden one that had partially burned in a fire and was sinking into the bay. Construction of the center’s two buildings started in 2008, and $1.5 million still needs to be raised by next March or the project stands to lose more than $1 million in matching grants. Cummings is confident the remainder can be raised.

“We’re pretty close,” he said. “We’ve been working at this a long time, and there are a lot of people who have been supportive and have indicated they will continue to be supportive.”

For Robison, who was a Port Townsend city planner in the 1990s and witnessed the fight over the waterfront property, the ability of a community of fewer than 10,000 to launch a project of close $13 million is testament to the town’s commitment to preserve its maritime heritage.

“It’s a story about a little town that fought to save itself and its waterfront and was successful,” he said. “It’s taken 20 years for us to buy that piece of property and redevelop it in a way that’s deserving of our community.”

About Deborah Bach

Deborah Bach is the editor and co-founder of Three Sheets Northwest. She is an avid sailor and long-time professional journalist. You can find Deborah aboard Three Sheets, an Island Packet 38, with her husband Marty and their cat Lily.

• View all posts by Deborah Bach →
• Blog
• Facebook