Mill site: Strait Gardens

The mill laid off about 193 workers in 2024, and the closure was made permanent that August.^{[1, 2]} In June 2026 a Washington ownership group, Candelaria Industries, announced an agreement to acquire the property, subject to approvals, and said no final redevelopment plan had been determined.^[4] In July the County discussed a letter supporting the buyer's proposal to study bioenergy and biomass use of the site.^[5]

On September 1, 2026 the City Council adopted a citywide, six-month moratorium on facilities whose principal use is data processing, by a 6-0 vote.^{[6, 7]} It was not a vote on any application; City officials said none was pending.^[19]

Strait Gardens is a public-interest concept. It could only go forward with the owner's interest, and it is not a counter-proposal to anyone.

ConceptAlong the water, a graving dock and casting halls where tunnel sections are built. Behind them, long factory halls with green roofs, glass and timber. Around the restored lagoon, a green district of gardens, tree canopy and park corridors between the halls, with a public promenade along the Strait that joins the City's Waterfront Trail, which already runs from the Coast Guard gate on Ediz Hook around the harbor to downtown.^[9]

The lagoon is part of the marine environment. In May 2022 a transient orca swam into a canal leading to the mill's lagoon and freed itself while NOAA monitored it.^[10] The shoreline design starts from habitat, not from hard edges.

The world's big immersed tunnels are built in yards like this. Sections are cast in a dry dock along the water, the dock is flooded, and the sections are floated out, towed into place and sunk into a trench on the seabed. The Fehmarnbelt tunnel between Denmark and Germany is being cast at a purpose-built factory at Rødbyhavn.^[11] The tunnel industry body notes that immersed tunnels are typically built in about 16 to 100 feet of water.^[12]

A yard that first serves the network's own tunnel lines could later make tunnel sections for projects around the Pacific, the way shipyards export hulls. See the Port Angeles tunnel page for how the tubes would go in.

ConceptLong, low, high-bay halls for advanced manufacturing, such as robots, and for building and servicing tunnel-boring machines for the yard next door, and parts for Starbase Quillayute, with green roofs and glass, connected to the port and the tunnels. A cultural center sits on the harbor side, set in park and trees. No company is involved, and none has endorsed this.

The harbor already needs room to work. In July 2025 the Boat Haven had 444 of its 450 slips occupied, with 32 boats on the wait list,^[20] and a February 2026 report for the Port found that boatbuilders and repair yards report growing demand for haul-out services.^[8] Peninsula College already trains people in boat fabrication, marine mechanics and welding.^[18]

ConceptA working edge with moorage and haul-out for working boats, space for marine trades, hands-on training bays, and a covered market for fish, farm and nursery stalls.

Other port towns have done this. Bellingham turned its former pulp mill site into a waterfront district that opened the downtown shore to the public for the first time in over 100 years, and the Port built a boat-building plant there.^[15] Vancouver's Granville Island became a public market district while keeping industry on site.^[16] Singapore made greening a matter of policy, with numeric rules for trees and shrubs in new development.^[17]

Nobody has been contacted, and nothing here implies the involvement or endorsement of any agency, tribe or company.