Gifford Pinchot National Forest Supervisor Gina Owens, left, stands Tuesday with National Park Service Superintendent Tracy Fortmann in front of the Gifford Pinchot's future headquarters in East Barracks Building 987 on the Fort Vancouver National Site. (Natalie Behring/The Columbian)Photo Gallery
A lease disagreement between the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and its landlord means Gifford Pinchot’s headquarters and visitor center will move to the Fort Vancouver National Site earlier than initially planned.
Beginning March 1, Gifford’s visitor services will share a space with the National Park Service at the national site’s visitor center, 1501 E. Evergreen Blvd. in Vancouver. Also in March, Gifford’s headquarters will move into temporary offices nearby on the site.
Forest staff initially planned to move this fall into a permanent location in Building 987 of the national site’s East Barracks after renovations to the 1906 structure were complete, but a lease disagreement with Gifford Pinchot’s current landlord forced an early move.
The new location will be much closer to the city’s urban core and Interstate 5 than Gifford Pinchot’s current spot at 10600 N.E. 51st Circle, near the Interstate 205 and state Highway 500 interchange in east Vancouver. The headquarters has been there since 1997.
According to Gifford Pinchot spokeswoman Sue Ripp, Gifford Pinchot renewed its lease on the east Vancouver building several times after the lease ended two years ago, but the property owner’s representative, FLM LLC, of San Jose, Calif., wouldn’t agree to another short-term lease extension. FLM did not return requests for comment.
“We were going to extend again,” Ripp said. “In the end, the landlord wanted us to commit to a longer lease than we could.”
Until Building 987 is finished, forest staff temporarily will be dispersed among three buildings at the national site. Some employees will have to do a combination of remote and on-site work.
Still, officials from the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and the National Park Service said they are enthusiastic about the early move. They said that by partnering with the National Park Service, Gifford Pinchot will offer extended business hours and be open Saturdays, thus giving people better customer service, and more time to plan trips to the forest and purchase federal recreation passes.
“This is a great opportunity to provide a joint presence with the National Park Service,” said Gifford Pinchot National Forest Supervisor Gina Owens. “We are excited to be a part of the Fort Vancouver campus and look forward to serving our public in our new location.”
At about 36,000 square feet, the east Vancouver space is far bigger than what the Gifford Pinchot required, and the new 24,000-square-foot barracks building will allow them to consolidate. At the height of commercial logging, more than 600 Forest Service employees were dispersed across the Gifford Pinchot forest; that number has dropped to about 160.
Building 987 was the headquarters of the U.S. Army Reserve’s 104th Division until 2010.
Gifford Pinchot also will lease a modern brick building in the South Barracks to be used as the Forest Service’s regional dispatch center. That building will be finished before the new headquarters.
All of the buildings will be retrofitted to the latest seismic standards.
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