Space is hard to come by at the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Vancouver office.
Not only is the lobby cramped, customers have trouble finding a parking space among the state agency’s boats and other equipment stored on the lot.
“We’ve basically outgrown the space,” said Guy Norman, Fish and Wildlife’s regional director for Southwest Washington. “We’re really struggling with limited parking space for our own functions, with addition to that of customers.”
Tucked into Gov. Jay Inslee’s 2014 supplemental budget proposal, however, is some money to help change that.
If approved by the state Legislature, $218,000 would cover the one-time expenses associated with the agency moving to a new location. That includes the cost of furniture and technical support, as well as moving costs.
The agency moved into its current location, a former Fred Meyer garden and home improvement store at 2108 Grand Blvd., in 1997.
The building provides office space to 114 state or federal employees. More than 80 of those employees work for Fish and Wildlife, while the others work for the state Department of Ecology and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The plan is to move all three agencies to the new location, Norman said.
Fish and Wildlife’s Southwest Washington office covers the lower Columbia River and six counties: Klickitat, Skamania, Clark, Cowlitz, Lewis and Wahkiakum. The regional office is responsible for administration and customer service, rule enforcement, permitting, habitat restoration, fisheries and land-based sites, such as boat ramps.
This fall, Fish and Wildlife began working with the state’s Department of Enterprise Services, which oversees state government contracts, to find a new building in the greater Vancouver area, Norman said. The agency has found a building it likes, but Norman said he can’t yet share the details because contract negotiations are ongoing.
“We’re quite a ways down the road in the process at this point,” he said. “Our endgame is to have our new lease ready by December 2014.”
Earlier this month, Inslee asked the Legislature to approve more than $200 million in new spending for 2014. That money would address a number of state issues, including overcrowded prisons, higher-than-expected enrollment in K-12 schools and wildfire damage. State legislators can run with his ideas when they convene Jan. 13 for a regular session, but they don’t have to.
If state money for the move doesn’t come through, Norman said he isn’t sure what the agency’s next steps would be.
