C-Tran directors approved the purchase of the former Gifford Pinchot National Forest headquarters for $6.85 million, plus $950,000 for closing costs and tenant improvements to the 40,000-square-foot building.
C-Tran will move its administrative staff out of its current location at 2425 N.E. 65th Ave and into the building early next year. As part of the site upgrades, C-Tran plans to add a new board room to host future meetings.
The building is at 10600 N.E. 51st Circle in Orchards, near the Interstate 205-state Highway 500 interchange and adjacent to the regional Washington State Department of Transportation and Washington State Patrol offices.
C-Tran’s administrative building was built in 1983. The agency then added modular buildings in 2006 and expanded its maintenance facilities that same year. In 2016, as part of The Vine project, C-Tran also expanded its maintenance facilities to accommodate the service’s 60-foot buses.
But the agency maintains that its facilities aren’t enough to meet its growing fleet and subsequent needs.
While administrative staff are moving, maintenance and operations staff will stay at on Northeast 65th. In the not too distant future, the facility will be renovated and expanded as part of C-Tran’s Administration/Operations/Maintenance Facility Master Plan.
The original administrative building is expected to be demolished to make room.
“Our operations department has been working in a modular unit that is nearing the end of its useful life,” C-Tran CEO Shawn Donaghy said in a news release. “We continue to experience capacity issues for employees and equipment, and our maintenance team needs to grow its facility to better serve our operations department and keep pace with current and future fleet growth. This required us to explore some immediate changes.”
Over the past several months, C-Tran considered multiple scenarios and possibilities to address its increasing capacity needs without coming to a set solution — until it found the old forest service headquarters.
“The footprint we own and the space we need are not going to work,” said C-Tran spokeswoman Christine Selk. “The most efficient way is for administration employees to move to a separate site.”
The building was erected in 1995. The U.S. Forest Service occupied it until relocating to Vancouver Barracks at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site in 2016.
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