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Request for Barracks renovation timely for parks service

Pieces of puzzle fall into place for moving NPS regional office to Vancouver

By Tom Vogt, Columbian Science, Military & History Reporter
Published: June 4, 2018, 9:05pm

With the National Park Service interested in moving its western regional office to Vancouver, some of the set-up work seems to be already underway with a $10 million request to renovate a Vancouver Barracks landmark.

The request is part of a park service budget document for fiscal year 2019. It seeks funding to rehabilitate a century-old building at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site.

It is described as a 33,000-square-foot Parade Ground building in the recently acquired Vancouver Barracks.

The work would be part of the Department of the Interior’s deferred maintenance and capital improvement plan.

“This project will upgrade a large National Register of Historic Places building originally constructed in 1907, to good condition to be utilized for office or leased space,” according to the budget document.

And the National Park Service’s Western region is looking for a new office space.

Spokesman Andrew Munoz said in a statement Monday that the National Park Service, in anticipation of the expiration of its lease in 2021, informed Pacific West Regional Office employees May 29 of its plan to seek Congressional approval “to relocate from leased commercial office space in San Francisco, to a vacant NPS-owned building at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site in Vancouver, Washington.”

The statement from Munoz confirmed a report over the weekend from KQED, a public broadcasting outlet in San Francisco.

“The NPS estimates the proposal will save more than $2 million a year in rent, could reduce salary and benefits costs by about $1.8 million a year, and eliminate $12 million in deferred maintenance with the restoration of the historic building it will occupy at Fort Vancouver,” Munoz said in Monday’s statement.

The Defense Department transferred the Vancouver Barracks to Fort Vancouver National Historic Site in 2012 as part of the military’s Base Realignment and Closure program.

Three structures on the south side of the Parade Ground fit the description of the funding request — a three-story (including attic) structure of about 33,000 square feet.

One of those buildings, just east of the O.O. Howard House, already has been modernized as the new headquarters of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. A smaller building is being renovated for use by some staffers of the Portland-based Bureau of Indian Affairs office.

Bringing the park service’s Pacific West Regional Office to Vancouver would follow that pattern.

It would be “consistent with the park’s master plan to develop a public service campus,” Fort Vancouver Superintendent Tracy Fortmann said Monday afternoon.

The report issued in 2011 indicated that potential use of one of the “front row” buildings included space for other National Park Service offices.

While she was not able to discuss specifics of the reported park service move, “We have been very supportive of the Forest Service’s occupancy, and the BIA moving in,” Fortmann said.

The park service has three offices in the Western region. The others are in Seattle and Honolulu, but the San Francisco office is where the regional director is based.

The regional office helps oversee 60 national parks in Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington as well as three U.S. territories in the Pacific. The parks get more than 65 million visitors annually.

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Columbian Science, Military & History Reporter