o Fort Vancouver National Historic Site acquired 28 historic buildings when the Defense Department handed over the East Barracks and South Barracks in May 2012.
Vancouver’s national park will become the home of another federal agency when the Gifford Pinchot National Forest moves its headquarters to Vancouver Barracks.
Fort Vancouver Superintendent Tracy Fortmann said Monday that the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service have agreed on a lease. The Gifford Pinchot National Forest will be headquartered in a historic infantry barracks building across the street from the O.O. Howard House.
It is the westernmost of four East Barracks structures, built in the early 1900s, facing Officers Row on the south side of the Parade Ground. The two-story landmark — listed as Building 987 — was the headquarters of the U.S. Army Reserve’s 104th Division until 2010.
The Gifford Pinchot National Forest also will lease a modern building along Fifth Street in the South Barracks. The brick structure will become the Forest Service’s regional dispatch center. Now a shop, it’s inventoried as Building 404.
The national forest currently is headquartered at 10600 N.E. 51st Circle in Orchards, in the shadow of the Interstate 205-state Highway 500 interchange. Administrators from both agencies say the move-in date is about two years away — in mid- to late 2016.
“Ninety to 100 staff from Orchards and Portland will be permanently stationed here,” said Ray Cozby, project manager at Fort Vancouver. “It’s a very exciting partnership that will benefit both agencies and the taxpayer and the public.”
When the Defense Department transferred the East and South Barracks property to the park service in May 2012, the Fort Vancouver master plan envisioned “a historic campus for public service.” Having the national forest as a tenant is a big part of that objective. The partnership also will bring the financial resources of two federal agencies into the construction work.
“We’re kind of splitting the bill,” said Dave Olson, acting deputy forest supervisor.
Olson said his agency will benefit from the higher visibility that comes with a home in Vancouver’s historic core. In the Gifford Pinchot’s current Orchards headquarters, “it’s hard for public to find us, and it’s tough to be connected to the community in this spot,” Olson said. The future location will be “a great opportunity to engage with the community,” Olson said.
The two agencies already partner on a national recreation event, the annual Get-Outdoors Day, Fortmann said. “This is an inviting place for the public, and it will bring more people” to the Gifford Pinchot headquarters, she said.
Not all the numbers have been crunched, so neither agency would speculate on any dollar figures.
Cozby said the amount of the lease would depend on how much money the Forest Service puts into the project. The lease amount also will be based on market value, and the building condition won’t be established until the renovation is complete.
However the final numbers play out, Olson said, the move will save the Forest Service money. The agency will be moving from about 36,000 square feet to about 24,000 square feet in the barracks.
“It’s got plenty of space for what we need,” Olson said. “We had more employees when we moved in here in 1997. Our workload has been reduced.”
The revenue from the lease will stay at Fort Vancouver, Cozby said, supporting more renovation projects.
Some rehabilitation work has been done already. The exterior work on the former post headquarters — the smallest of the four barracks buildings facing Officers Row — is the most visible, with a new paint job and a new roof.
However, “we’ve done a lot of behind-the-scenes work,” Cozby said. It includes utility work and some hazardous-material work dealing with lead-based paint.
There has been other work on the 33 acres, reflecting the different ways the park service and U.S. Army view the topic of public access.
“For 160 years,” Fortmann said, “most of it has been off limits.”
“We’ve been removing fences and barricades to open access to the public,” Cozby said.
