City Council Extends Winter Welcoming Center Lease by Four Days

From November through April, the Winter Welcoming Center provides unhoused residents with space during the day to stay out of the weather, use the bathrooms and wifi, and connect with service providers. This much needed service was in front of City Council on Monday as they attempted to extend their lease of the Pope Marine Building past April 14. 

“We are constantly seeing people new to our streets, newly homeless, and people who are older and more disabled than in years before, many of whom were sheltered from 4pm to 8am at the American Legion overnight emergency shelter,” Winter Welcoming Center Executive Director Julia Cochrane said during Monday’s special city council meeting.

Some of the people who have benefited from the Welcoming Center spoke during the public comment section, explaining that without the center, they won’t have an alternative place to be. 

Ben Casserd, the manager of the Winter Welcoming Center, summed up their role for many unhoused people. “We are a place that people have been able to come to find a place to be safe, to get free food, and especially, resource connections to areas and organizations in Port Townsend and Jefferson County that they may not have elsewhere.”

Though everyone at the meeting acknowledged how deeply needed the Welcoming Center is in our community, the City’s ability to continue hosting them long-term was less certain. 

Bookings and zoning issues prevent long-term lease

The Pope Marine building is coming up on its busy season, with over 30 reservations already made for April through November, according to Community Services Director Melody Sky Weaver. The first of those reservations is coming up on April 23. 

The events that book out Pope Marine Building include some of Port Townsend’s largest festivals, including the Victorian Festival, Pride and Concerts on the Docks. All of these events bring people into downtown and help support small businesses, according to a public comment made by Port Townsend Mainstreet Executive Director Natalie Maitland. 

Though it may be worth considering moving events that have an economic benefit in order to make space for people in crisis, it isn’t simply a matter of the city needing the space for other bookings. According to city planner Emma Bolin, the Pope Marine Building isn’t zoned to have a year-round shelter and extending the lease would require the city to rezone the park that the building sits in.

“I know that a lot of people may be disappointed to hear that, and it's really challenging to continually update zoning whenever there is a site specific proposal in front of us, because staff resources are really limited,” Bolin said. The city has tried twice since 2024 to update the zoning for parks facilities to allow longer term leases for the unhoused and they would be willing to try again, though according to Bolin it would require a state environmental policy act analysis, which would take time and resources away from other city projects and it would be difficult to achieve in the necessary time frame.

“This is a very challenging situation,” council member David Faber said. “My natural inclination is to always prioritize public resources for services like the warming center and I also think it's incredibly important that people who are unhoused and struggling in our community not be shoved out of the way in a place where they're not visible, and be a visible part of our community. So that's on the one hand. The other hand, this is a last minute request with significant downstream consequences.”

A last minute ask and no good solution

The Welcome Center had a six month lease on the Pope Marine Building, a tenancy that they believed would get them through until the new Caswell-Brown Shelter was open and unhoused people would be able to connect with services there. 

“This fall, we believed it was possible the shelter would be leaving the American Legion to its new home at Caswell-Brown, off Mill Road sometime this winter,” Cochrane said. “If that had happened, extending our time at Pope Marine would not have made sense, because it's not our intention to entice the unhoused to go to the very end of Water Street from the far edges of the city.”

According to Cochrane, they only recently learned that the new shelter would not be ready until  early 2027 and that the American Legion was willing to extend their agreement with the county and OlyCap to allow the overnight shelter to stay there. 

With only a few days until the end of the lease, the city council didn’t have a lot of time to consider their options. They could either rezone the park and attempt to work around their summer bookings, or they would have to uphold the original lease agreement and the Welcome Center would have to leave.

“I'm completely sympathetic to the concerns of everyone who wants to keep the shelter open. The need is clear, and my heart goes out to you, but coming in just days before the end of the lease puts the city in a very difficult position,” council member Fred Obee said, summing up the heavy feeling in the room. 

“This is one of the hardest conversations that I have ever had to participate in as a council member, and I've been in a council member chair for 10 years. I do not like this conversation. It is uncomfortable,” Mayor Amy Howard said. “I have been homeless in Port Townsend. I have relied on services in Port Townsend. I have relied on services specifically and directly from Julia. Let's acknowledge that I don't see a good way out of this right now.”

In the end, the only help the city could provide was four extra days for the Winter Welcoming Center to find a new home, with several council members and city staff encouraging them to keep working with the Jefferson Interfaith Action Coalition to find a solution. 

The shelter will be able to stay at the Pope Marine Building until April 19. 

“It's four days, but it's effectively like a working week. I was hoping that we might be able to come up with Plan B in another working week,” council member Libby Wennstrom said.