By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES – The Port Angeles Chamber of Commerce is hosting the first annual “Big Spring Spruce Up” this Saturday, May 1, inviting residents to pull together in teams to help tidy up specific areas downtown.
Several community service clubs, including Rotary and Kiwanis, have signed on to lead one of the nine projects, which will focus primarily on weeding and trash collection.
Humble beginnings compared to what organizers are planning for, which is to turn it into a full-on annual springtime festival.
Chamber Director Marc Abshire says the idea sprang from the Chamber’s ELEVATE PA 2026 project to envision a new future for downtown Port Angeles.
“Yeah, this year we’re really going to be focusing on clean up, because we got a lot of feedback from our survey for Elevate PA 2026 that one of the biggest issues that, you know, hurts the commerce and the business district downtown is the cleanliness. But in future years, we do hope to involve things like paint and hammers and nails and duct tape, coat hangers, anything that is required to patch things up, fix things up, make them look nice. Ultimately, it’s about beautification.”
Abshire says there are areas downtown that are maintained by City staff and areas that are the responsibility of property owners, but he says some tasks fall into a gray area and never seem to get done.
“You know, a lot of people don’t quite understand that it’s not the responsibility of the City government necessarily to keep every space clean, and it’s not really the responsibility of individual business and, really, even some of the property owners. It’s sort of in-between both of those, and really is kind of up to the community itself. So, we are working with the City. The Ciy’s doing a lot of work this week, actually, to support our efforts. We’re working with the business owners. A lot of them are planning to do a bunch of work on Saturday, and then we’ll bring the community volunteers in to really take care of this issue of cleanliness in the downtown for this year.”
Volunteers are asked to meet at 121 Front Street, the location of the Winter Ice Village at 9:00am and work until noon. Bring gloves and even gardening tools if you like, and please wear a mask.
The Big Spring Spruce Up is sponsored by Port Angeles Realty.