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Kalakala 'hatchling' is in the works
The 'Baby K' might be just the boost its ailing parent needs
Wednesday, February 14, 2001
By MIKE BARBER
The Kalakala is going to be a mama.
The ultrasound tests were performed two years ago. And while the Depression-era ferry with the streamlined, art-deco figure hasn't been able to get into dry dock for a checkup since then, there's no doubt a little duplicate is on the way.
Given that "Kalakala" is Chinook jargon for flying bird, maybe it's a hatchling.
Whatever the case, Bevis, the midwife in this little drama, expects the Baby K one day to grow into an educational showpiece to take to places such as the Western Washington Fair in Puyallup and park outside sports events to give people a tangible education about it's famous parent.
At 27 feet and with an aluminum frame, some curved metal sheeting and the emerging skeleton of a flying bridge, the Baby Kalakala is one-tenth the size of its mother ship.
No one knows who the father is, although there are clues. Unlike the mother, Baby K is a landlubber with a Winnebago recreational-vehicle chassis and 30,000 miles on the speedometer.
The Kalakala, however, isn't talking.
One thing's for sure: The Kalakala, a Seattle landmark between 1935 and 1969, has been lonely, trying since its 1988 return from Alaska to cheering Seattle crowds to attract $700,000 in donations. It needs the cash to get into dry dock for a critical inspection and repairs that Bevis feels that would attract investment suitors.
Things, however, haven't been going all that well for the non-profit Kalakala Foundation since last summer, when the boat nearly became homeless.
Bevis, who heads the foundation, says the organization's debt, after shrinking from $80,000 to $50,000 last summer, is back to $80,000 again.
By the end of February, he expects to lay off two of three hired workers and close down the foundation's Pioneer Square office.
The foundation recently fell two months in arrears on its moorage fees, and the landlords are not pleased, Bevis acknowledges.
"We're just running out of steam," Bevis said.
"We opened the office last summer when it looked like we were going to be able to have several fund-raisers."
In June, city inspectors and the Coast Guard found that the boat, berthed at north Lake Union, did not comply with fire codes that would have allowed large crowds aboard.
Worse, the foundation learned from the city in September that the boat needed to find a new home after a routine aerial photo inspection of the area determined that boat protruded 35 feet too far into shipping lanes.
City officials, who obtained a $285,000 federal grant to help with the boat once the Kalakala Foundation finds matching private funding, helped out a little by holding off on leveling a $75-a-day fine, giving Bevis time to search for a new home.
So far, the hunt has been frustrating.
"The basic question is, what are we going to do, scrap the Kalakala or fix it?" he asks rhetorically. "I'm not going to scrap it."
Maybe, he muses half-jokingly, "I'll run for mayor on a Fix-the-Kalakala platform," turning serious when he speaks of the fading culture and values he believes the boat embodies that made Seattle special in the first place.
"And we've got our own tug to use with it, which makes us dangerous," he adds with a grin.
"Maybe I should just tow it into the middle of the lake and sit there in protest until we get some attention."
One door to the boat's salvation remains open: a serious proposal floated last fall by Port Angeles community leaders to acquire and restore the boat as a floating museum and community center for the north Olympic Peninsula town's developing waterfront.
Bevis' admittedly quixotic dream is to restore the vessel so it can sail under its own power again -- an estimated $5 million to $6 million job--and berth it at Pier 48 near its old Pioneer Square home.
After all, he rediscovered the old boat, forlorn, forgotten and rusting away in Alaska mud in the 1980s, and spearheaded a defiant effort to dig it out and tow it 1,700 miles back to Seattle.
So last month, he and the Kalakala Foundation board turned down the Port Angeles offer, believing it was too soon to commit to a permanent mooring.
But the dialogue continues; Bevis plans to meet with a Port Angeles civic leader this week to keep communication open.
Even if Port Angeles were to acquire the boat, the Kalakala still would face homelessness in the short term because the Olympic Peninsula town has no place to berth it and no place to remove lead-based paint.
Bevis, who has been forced to spend more time helping the big Kalakala than tending to Baby Kalakala, hopes he can deliver the small fry in time to help.
He said he wants the little landlubber to grow into a tangible showpiece to drive around the state to events and festivals.
He envisions it helping to gather support for the mother ship by reminding people of the Great Depression and how the historic old ferry became a Seattle symbol, embodied the best, and hopefully not fading, qualities of the people who built and rode it.
But although the Kalakala Foundation has recovered a wealth of knowledge about the Kalakala, Bevis said he has no clue about the gestation period of a ferry boat.
"It's as-soon-as-possible," he said of the Baby Kalakala's due date. "That's always been my calendar."
P-I reporter Mike Barber can be reached at 206-448-8018 or mikebarber@seattle-pi.com
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
"It's not a scale replica; it's a tadpole," says Peter Bevis of the little aluminum sprite gestating since 1995 in his Fremont Arts Foundry. 
Mike McNeil sits at the wheel of the "Baby Kalakala," a 27-foot-long model of the historic ferry. Its creator, Peter Bevis, hopes it will help him raise money to restore the original. Paul Joseph Brown / Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Click for larger photo
A series of bureaucratic setbacks, however, scuttled plans for a series of imaginative ways to raise cash that the foundation had planned. 
At his foundry in Fremont, Peter Bevis imagines the possibilities regarding his Baby Kalakala, which is mounted on a Winnebago chassis. Paul Joseph Brown / Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Click for larger photo
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