PORT TOWNSEND — Poised to take over operational management at Fort Worden, Washington State Parks hosted an open house to discuss a range of topics, including tenant lease agreements and a request to the state Legislature for additional funding.
Anna Gill, the southwest superintendent for State Parks, and Chris Holm, the interim campus business manager, along with Celeste Tell, interim executive director of Fort Worden Public Development Authority (PDA), hosted the open house Thursday.
“We’ve been working closely with the PDA to transfer operations back over to State Parks,” Gill said. “The most important thing for the public to know is that we have been working really hard to prevent disruption or any changes in our services. As a member of the public, our goal is that you aren’t going to notice anything different.”
A hearing for PDA dissolution will be conducted at 6 p.m. Oct. 7 before the Port Townsend City Council, 540 Water St.
In the case of dissolution, management will revert back to state parks.
In the immediate future, the focus is on stabilizing the fort, Gill said. Parks will begin the formal planning process for long-term management at the beginning of 2025. There will be opportunities for public input, she said.
If the PDA is dissolved, tenant lease agreements and concession agreements will be voided. Gill said parks has been working actively with tenants and concessions and that parks is preparing what it is calling short-term leases of three years as the dissolution approaches.
Initially, tenants will pay month-to-month rent, probably until the end of January, Holm said, at which point the park should have accurate figures on what it will charge for rent.
“We are contracting with a company to do a fair market assessment of all of our buildings that we can then base our actual rent off of,” Holm said.
The park will also look at tenants’ improvements made to park buildings and credit them a reduction in rent, Holm said.
“A lot of these non-profits weren’t prepared for suddenly having to pay rent,” Gill said. “They’ve been doing their planning and their operations and their budgeting around the current agreement with the PDA. In this time before they’re able to plan in a longer term, we’re doing what we can and talking through what investments they may have made that would qualify for deductions on an actual month-to-month rent. But certainly, we’re working around our procurement and state laws around what we are obligated to collect.”
State parks does not have a budget for taking on park management, Gill said, so the agency will move funds around as it can. Parks also has submitted a legislative request for supplemental funding, she said.
“We’ve put together a supplemental request to the Legislature,” Gill said. “So we’re hoping that we can recover some of the cost that we’re expending right now, hiring staff, and we will be bringing on more maintenance staff early next year. In the meantime, we’re going to be doing what we can with current resources to maintain. We are working on long-term plans for what the campus looks like and we can actually manage.”
“In addition to the supplemental request and the full request for the next biennium, which also includes requests for capital funding, I think the thought is that some of that would be coming towards Fort Worden,” Holm said. “I will say, it’s not going to be a fast process. We do have plans to hopefully invest more than what we’ve seen in the past.”
Discover Pass may be required
Holm said parks is looking at a plan for implementing the Discover Pass as a requirement for the whole campus.
“Currently, it’s just in the campground,” Holm said. “That is, for State Parks, one of our primary revenue sources to be able to operate. So, we are talking through that and how we do that with customers who go to like Madrona Mind and Body. Do they need to have a park pass to go to a business? We’re working through that.”
As the fort hosts a number of large community events, as well as events which attract participants from out of state, the park is considering how it might treat those events, Holm said.
“If we have an agreement with an entity and we are generating revenue in a different form, like through a special agreement with them, then the Discover Pass does not necessarily apply. When you’re having a large event where they’re paying us to have the event or they’re paying us through tenant lease or something like that, then that Discover Pass is not applicable.”
Parks maintenance
“I’m very optimistic for hospitality, the three-year time frame is a workable scenario,” said Fort Worden Hospitality CEO Matt Gurney. “We’re collaborating very closely with parks in trying to figure out how to make that sustainable for everybody and move the needle on some of the challenges on campus.”
Fort Worden Hospitality has been responsible for property maintenance since 2022, when it separated from the PDA, Gurney said. Parks will take on much of that responsibility moving forward.
“It’s looking to be a similar (concessions) fee with some of the maintenance elements coming off of our responsibility,” he said. “It makes it easier for us to operate and invest in other areas.”
The Fort Worden Public Development Authority (PDA) voted to seek dissolution from the city on Aug. 1 after it struggled with finances for years. Officials determined they could no longer be a part of the fort’s success moving into the future.
Formed in 2012, the PDA signed a 50-year master lease in 2013, taking on the responsibilities both of maintaining the property’s infrastructure and managing daily operations.
PROS Consulting completed a comprehensive strategy for the PDA earlier this year. The PDA came to view the strategy as a 10-year plan.
Following a three-day workgroup in June, brainstorming feasible paths toward the PROS plan, the PDA concluded that its viability as leadership in the process had reached an end, Tell said. Representatives from State Parks, the City of Port Townsend, Fort Worden Hospitality and Centrum attended the workshop.
Gill said the park will use the PROS plan to inform its process as it develops a long-term plan, but details are yet to be determined.
“We want this to be a collaborative process,” she said. “We are going to be continuing to get input from the community and the public.”
“Once we had the PROS Plan, we recognized very quickly that it was a 10-year plan and that we weren’t in a position start implementing those recommendations yet, and so that was when we formed the working group, and the working group came up with the idea of a bridge plan,” Tell said. “That’s what we’re doing right now. This is the bridge plan to get the fort and the campus to a place where that PROS Plan can be started.
“Initially, everybody did everything they could to keep the PDA in place,” Tell said. “And it just didn’t make sense in the near term. I think this is the right thing to do and the right way to go. Those three years will go fast.”
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@sequimgazette.com.
