On the brink: Washington State Parks bouncing back after ‘being on the edge’

Washington’s parks turn 103 years old tomorrow, and they’re marking it with free entry to any park across the state. But there’s another celebration going on, too.

They’re celebrating a major bounce-back from the recession, which nearly crippled the parks system &#8212 one of the largest in the country.

Washington’s parks have a long history and it all started with one Northwest shipbuilding tycoon.

Related: Seattle’s parks dept. grappling with encroachment ‘spread all over’

“A man named Robert Moran, who was an entrepreneur out of Seattle and owned a tremendous amount of land up on the San Juan Islands. And you’ll recognize the name, if you know the state parks system, for Moran State Park,” says State Parks spokeswoman Virginia Painter.

When Moran retired, he was inspired by the conservation efforts of John Muir to give a big chunk of his property back to the people.

There was one problem, says Painter &#8212 the state didn’t have a way to accept the gift.

So, in 1913, three years before the National Parks system was even created, the Washington State Parks Board was born.

Moran’s legacy has carried on, with a whopping 40 percent of State Parks land donated by private owners. And the system has grown by leaps and bounds, swelling to 125 parks, encompassing 125,000 acres across Washington state.

But then, the recession hit and progress in the parks ground to a halt.

“We were really on the brink, really on the edge in 2011-13 to keep the parks system going,” Painter said.

Painter says their tax funding was slashed by more than 50 percent. They were forced to lay off a third of their staff, and convert many full time positions to part time or seasonal ones.

“Some of our customer service began to suffer, some of our custodial care of parks began to suffer, we could do very little maintenance,” she said. “It was survival mode.”

Still, it wasn’t enough. State parks had to make more money. So, staff started looked for business solutions to their problem, starting with making visitors pay for access with the day use fees. That’s how the
Discover Pass was born.

Staff also changed campsite reservations, looking closely at market rates for sites and launching their own form of surge pricing for the hottest locations.

“So we have an economy, a standard, and a high demand one &#8212 they’re the more primo sites: the bigger sites, they might have a view, they might be conveniently located to something that’s very popular. So we increase the fees on those,” Painter said. “And the economy sites we made more affordable. And we got what we wanted. We earned more revenue and we filled more sites overall, which means more people got to use the parks system. Perhaps people couldn’t afford the standard fee in the middle, but now they could afford the economy fee. They’re still going to have a great campsite and a great experience.”

Still, Painter says they’re committed to helping everyone access the parks, which is why they have 12 free days. There’s also a program where individuals can do work projects in the parks, in exchange for a yearly Discover Pass.

In another effort to boost revenue, they renegotiated leases with private companies on public land.

“We have lands that are leased for cell phone towers and other purposes and we took a look at those as they came up for releasing,” said Painter. “And we made sure all the rates were up to market.”

To keep improving parks, the state also brought on more public-private partnerships.

“Like a private investor maybe being able to build something the public can use. But it’s not going to look commercial,” Painter said. “We’re going to get money from the lease of that for operating the parks system, but the public would also get great amenities that perhaps we can’t afford to provide.”

For example, at some parks, private companies build and maintain cabins that the state will eventually own once a lease is over.

And Painter says it worked &#8212 Discover Pass sales have soared 31 percent in the last year, state parks now are bouncing back with the new revenue, and have had more visitors than ever.

The legislature has even added more money to the parks budget, which means staff can start bringing back educational programming and focus once again on preserving not just the land, but the legacy of the people of Washington.

“There are cultural sites, there are historical buildings,” Painter said. “Where there are just tremendous stories to be told. There are the stories of the white settlers who came, Native Americans who were here for thousands of years. And we’re working with some of those tribes to tell those stories. We’re just trying to take the system that we have and make it shiny again.”