Work is progressing nicely and the project stays on-time and on-budget. Construction continues to make steady progress at the future Hurricane Ridge Middle School, with work advancing on both the new classroom building and the gym modernization project. Significant milestones are taking shape throughout the new three-story building.
You can see it on the Olympic Peninsula, where a community is putting its own assets to work. The Port of Port Angeles is an economic engine sitting on a deep-water harbor. It turned a shuttered mill site into a marine trades park and built out a composites campus where aerospace suppliers and boat builders can grow. Peninsula College is preparing local people for the jobs of the future and the innovation is real: The Makah Tribe’s new sawmill is turning locally abundant hemlock into advanced cross-laminated timber and homes for tribal families
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/how-port-angeles-is-pointing-the-way-for-rural-america
Candelaria Industries, the company that announced in June they were buying the McKinley Mill in Port Angeles, has made no decisions about what they are going to do with the property, but they are floating some ideas.
One of those ideas is looking at whether turning the paper mill into a bioenergy and biomass processing facility, and County Commissioners are backing the idea of doing a feasibility study to see if it has potential.
To help pay for the study, the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities, a non-profit public charity working to find ways to support the nation’s working forests and forest-reliant communities like ours with closed wood products manufacturing facilities, including pulp and paper mills. An initiative will make available up to $500,000 in pre-development funding to support one or two facilities in the United States.
PORT ANGELES — A new hotel brand inspired by America’s national parks is making Port Angeles its very first location.
Bamboo Hotels has purchased the vacant property at First and Washington and plans to build an 86-room flagship hotel. Company leaders say they’re evaluating whether construction can move quickly enough for an opening by the end of next summer.
The four-story hotel would feature guest rooms on the lower levels, with a rooftop lobby, bar, fitness studio and outdoor wellness terrace that includes a sauna, hot tub, cold plunge and yoga pavilion overlooking the Olympic Mountains and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Company CEO Nick Curcio told Newsradio KONP Port Angeles stood out from dozens of communities considered for Bamboo’s first hotel.
“Yeah, we looked all across the country, literally, of where to put this first flagship property we looked at. Flagstaff, Arizona, Moab, Utah, Sedona, Arizona, and we couldn’t find a town that we were more excited about than Port Angeles. It’s a town with incredible soul, a really vibrant, creative community, a culinary community, a great summer events program, some of the best views in the nation, and of course the access to Olympic National Park.”
Curcio says the hotel will combine Nordic and Japanese-inspired design with affordable rates. He says they hope to make it a gathering place for both visitors and local residents.
https://www.myclallamcounty.com/2026/07/15/bamboo-hotels-picks-port-angeles-for-flagship/
PORT ANGELES — A housing project that started before the COVID-19 pandemic is set to get approval from the Clallam County commissioners today.
The commissioners discussed the request for final approval of a 66-lot binding site plan to create a 55-year-old-plus manufactured home park during their work session Monday.
“So you would notice that (the application) is a very old one,” said Donella Clark, a Department of Community Development (DCD) principal planner. “That’s because it got appealed in court.”
After an open record hearing for the project on Feb. 7, 2019, the hearing examiner issued a decision of approval for the project with 34 conditions. That decision was appealed to Clallam County Superior Court, which remanded back to the hearing examiner on Jan. 30, 2020, according to county documents.
Following an open record remand hearing July 16, 2020, the hearing examiner issued a “decision upon remand” supplementing the previous decision and incorporating the 34 conditions, according to county documents.
“So now, there are 34 conditions that have been reviewed,” Clark said Monday. “Staff has reviewed those final documents and determined that the conditions for approval have been met.”
The project will be on about 8.8 acres of an undeveloped 15.5-acre property near the corner of Hooker and Atterberry roads in the Carlsborg Urban Growth Area on a site that’s connected to Clallam County PUD water and the Carlsborg sewer, Clark said.
The property will include critical area buffers and designated open space, according to county documents. There also will be landscaping, fencing and stormwater infrastructure.
During Monday’s meeting, Commissioner Randy Johnson expressed concerns about the required landscaping, stating that he always likes to make sure the plants are still alive two or three years later.
“When we were out doing our landscaping review, we saw that it was irrigated and saw that I think they had already removed some dead things,” Clark said.
Commissioner Mike French called the process for this development “a long saga.”
“I’m hoping that they finally found a place where everybody’s going to be happy,” French said. “That the development can be successful and it can be a positive contribution to the community.”
Pretty cool that Pew Charitable Trusts recently used Port Angeles as a case study for how small and midsize cities can use preapproved plans, zoning reform, and fee waivers to make housing easier to build. Is the problem solved? Obviously not. But the facts show Port Angeles has been taking concrete steps, and those steps are already increasing ADU production.
Pew’s May 13, 2026 report, “Preapproved Building Plans Help Cities Improve Housing Affordability,” includes a case study on Port Angeles. Pew frames PA as a small coastal city facing rising housing costs, tourism-driven labor pressures, low vacancy, employer retention issues, and a high share of cost-burdened households.
Pew highlights Port Angeles as using a multipronged housing strategy, not just one silver-bullet policy. They point to the 2019 Housing Action Plan, incentive zoning, tax exemptions, 2023 zoning reform for missing-middle housing, the pre-approved plans, and fee waivers ranging from $5,000 to $20,000 for eligible housing types.
As Teddy Roosevelt famously said, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” I think Port Angeles really punched above its weight this year.
Despite the wind, the downtown celebration was a lot of fun. My son had an absolute blast with all the free slides, play areas, and foam zone. The hot dog eating contest was awesome, the lawnmower derby was a blast, and the parade is always one of the highlights of the day. Then the fireworks capped off a wonderful celebration!
It’s easy to focus on what’s not perfect, but days like this are a great reminder of what makes our community special. Happy 250th birthday, America! 🇺🇸
As Teddy Roosevelt famously said, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” I think Port Angeles really punched above its weight this year.
Despite the wind, the downtown celebration was a lot of fun. My son had an absolute blast with all the free slides, play areas, and foam zone. The hot dog eating contest was awesome, the lawnmower derby was a blast, and the parade is always one of the highlights of the day. Then the fireworks capped off a wonderful celebration!!
It’s easy to focus on what’s not perfect, but days like this are a great reminder of what makes our community special. Happy 250th birthday, America! 🇺🇸
Olympic National Park had about 3.6 million visits in 2025. ONP visitors spent nearly $300 million in the local economy. People come to Clallam County and Port Angeles every year just to get a small taste of what we get to experience every day. That is pretty incredible when you stop and think about it. A LOT of people save money, plan vacations, book hotels, rent cars, and spend their limited time off work just to be here for a few days. We get to call this place home.
But for me, the best part of living here is not just the scenery. It is the people. This community shows up. When the Dream Playground was destroyed, people did not just complain about it. They rebuilt it. When people wanted a pump track, the community made that happen too. When our schools started falling apart, voters stepped up.
Nobody is saying everything is perfect. But the fact that people argue so passionately about this place is also evidence that people care. Apathy does not look like heated public meetings, long Reddit threads, volunteer boards, nonprofit fundraisers, school campaigns, park projects, and people giving up their weekends to build something for kids they may never even meet. This is a community where people give their time, their money, their labor, their opinions, and their energy because they want this place to be better.
There are plenty of beautiful places in the world. What makes a place a home is whether people care enough to make it better. Port Angeles has that.
A lot of people only focus on what is wrong in Clallam County. There are real problems, and nobody should pretend otherwise. But the full picture also includes real progress.
Overdose deaths are down. Alcohol and drug-related deaths declined from 2023 to 2025. Local response programs are connecting more people to services after overdoses, and that means more lives saved. The county dropped from the second-highest overdose fatality rate in Washington to 11th. The projected cost of crime per resident in Clallam County is $383 per year, $81 less than the national average and $227 less than Washington State's average. King County residents, by comparison, pay over $800 per person.
Youth outcomes are improving too. Clallam County’s high school dropout rate is significantly lower than it was a decade ago, and the on-time graduation rate has improved over that same period. Housing is still being added. It is not enough, and we still need more, but new residences continue to be permitted and built. The May 2026 CED Building Report shows 28 total dwelling units YTD in 2026, compared with 16 for this same period in 2025.
The local economy is not standing still either. Payroll jobs were higher in December 2025 than they were a year earlier. As of May 2026, Clallam County's unemployment rate dropped to 4.9%, down from 5.4% the prior month, with employers adding 280 jobs to payrolls.
None of this means every problem is solved. It does mean the story of Clallam County is not only decline as some would have you believe.
Progress is happening. Lives are being saved. More students are graduating. More housing is being added. More people are working.
We should be honest about the challenges, but we should also be honest about the progress.
Seegers is entitled to explain what he says he intended. But voters are entitled to judge the words themselves. There is a difference between encouraging civic participation and telling a church audience that voting Republican is voting for truth while Democrats represent evil. Calling it a metaphor does not erase the partisan and religious framing of the original remarks.
Also worth noting: the article discloses that the interviewer/publisher, Jeff Tozzer, is also Seegers’ campaign manager. That does not make the interview invalid, but it does make it campaign damage control, not independent journalism.
[https://www.ccwatchdog.com/p/the-shotgun-sermon\](https://www.ccwatchdog.com/p/the-shotgun-sermon)
