PORT TOWNSEND — Procurement of Port of Port Townsend office space intended to house a U.S. Customs officer could be six months away from reality, port officials said Wednesday.
Port Executive Director Larry Crockett, during an afternoon work session, assured port commissioners and those with the Border Patrol Free Network, a Port Townsend-area group opposing the build-up of a Border Patrol presence on the North Olympic Peninsula, that U.S. Customs, not the Border Patrol, sought to lease port space through the federal General Services Administration.
Crockett said that in discussions with the director of Customs in Port Angeles, Daniel Horseman, he was assured the 1,770 square feet of space was intended “for the officers in blue and not the agents in green.”
Blue uniforms are worn by Customs officers. Border Patrol agents wear green.
“Once we sign the lease, if they do away with Customs and put in the Border Patrol, we have no control over that,” Crockett later said of the proposed lease that would bring $42,000 a year in additional lease revenue to the port.
On the table is a potential 10-year lease — five years firm with an option to extend it another five years, Crockett said.
Commissioners took no action on the lease Wednesday.
The space would include the existing port commissioners’ chambers and adjacent existing-but-vacant office space at the front door of the port’s administrative offices on Hudson Street at Point Hudson.
Crockett said the port commissioners would meet in the original smaller conference room in the port’s administrative offices until another meeting room was remodeled.
Border Patrol Free representatives said they were happy the port was leasing to U.S. Customs and not the Border Patrol but were still suspicious why so much space was needed for one existing Port Townsend-based Customs officer.
Crockett said the GSA’s minimum lease requirement was 1,700 square feet, which was why so much space was needed for one Customs officer.
The port is working up a drawing of the proposed remodeling to accommodate U.S. Customs and work with GSA to get plans approved, Crockett said.
GSA has been seeking new office space the past year for its Customs officer now housed in the historic Customs Building, which also houses the post office on Washington Street.
GSA’s specifications call for locating the new office within the area of Port Townsend bounded by the waterfront, Franklin Street, Hudson Street and Walker Street.
Libby Palmer and Jim Buckley of the Border Patrol Free Network said they were satisfied the space was intended to be leased to Customs, but they called for close monitoring.
“They said [the port] would be public, and we will hold their feet to the fire,” Buckley said.
Port Townsend attorney Paul Richmond, who has made a Freedom of Information Act request for the lease agreement from the port and GSA, said he saw Customs and the Border Patrol as working under the same border protection government umbrella.
“The dynamics of these agencies are constantly changing,” he told the port commissioners.
He urged more public comments before the commissioners formally approve the lease agreement with GSA.
Port Deputy Director Jim Pivarnik estimated it could take up to six months before the space was in use because the GSA had to approve plans and bids for construction before work could be done.
The new office would renew the port’s status as a port of entry at Jefferson County International Airport south of Port Townsend between state highways 19 and 20.
That status was lost two years ago when a Customs officer was transferred to Port Angeles.
The Border Patrol Free network, formed in 2008, wants to reverse the expansion of the Border Patrol and Homeland Security on the Olympic Peninsula.
Border Patrol expansion
In 2006, four agents worked in the Port Angeles headquarters, which covers both Clallam and Jefferson counties. That number had increased to 24 by April 2009. By last August, the staff was 25.
Work is expected to begin this month on the North Olympic Peninsula’s new Border Patrol headquarters on 3.4 acres at 110 Penn St. in Port Angeles.
The new facility will be built for up to 50 agents, a standard size for the agency’s headquarters.
Project manager Mike Sangren of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has said there are no plans to expand the agent numbers.
But the draft environmental impact statement for the project said: “Future staff expansion is anticipated for the Port Angeles station.”
The 19,000-square-foot Border Patrol station, which will cost $5.7 million, is expected to be completed by April.
The site will include a 40-foot radio tower, three dog runs, a kennel, a chain-link fence topped by razor wire and outside lighting at night.
Inside will be two holding cells, the same number as in the current, smaller Border Patrol headquarters at the Richard B. Anderson Federal Building at 138 W. First St., which Border Patrol officials said the agency has outgrown.
________
Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.