Sale of historic Boy Scouts cabin stirs anger

PORT TOWNSEND, Wash. – Boy Scouts in this waterfront Olympic Peninsula town have traditionally earned their badges in a fir-log cabin built 70 years ago on a wooded acre with a sweeping view.

But the old Scout House property has been sold – without warning and for too little cash, locals say – by the Chief Seattle Council of the Boy Scouts.

In April, the Seattle-based council accepted an unsolicited bid of $480,000 from local developer and former Port Townsend City Councilman Vern Garrison. The property went on the market last week, divided into six lots with a combined selling price of $2.25 million.

“It appears I did get a good deal,” Garrison told the Seattle Times for a Wednesday story on the flap.

The council decision has created an uproar and intensified hopes of saving the structure at its current site.

About 700 people have signed petitions to save it from development.

“Other clubs meet in places that are generic – firehouses, churches, community centers,” said Cub Scout leader Kevin Amo. “When kids walk in here, they know they’re in a place where their parents used to be.”

Local Boy Scout leader Mitch Poling has said he’ll resign if his troop can’t meet there.

“A couple of former Eagle Scouts were going to burn their badges over this,” Amo said.

“The community feels the BSA has really let them down,” said Judith Bird of the local group Friends of the Scout House.

The Chief Seattle Council insisted it got a fair price for the property, which its appraiser assessed at $420,000.

“I just don’t know why they weren’t prudent enough to get a second opinion,” said Barbara Bogart, a Port Townsend Realtor since 1986.

Garrison’s son-in-law, real-estate agent Charlie Arthur, has priced the 5,000- to 10,000-square-foot lots from $249,000 to $475,000. Each has good water and mountain views, Arthur said. He told the Peninsula Daily News in Port Angeles that he expects them to sell quickly.

“If it weren’t me now, it’d be someone else very soon,” Garrison said.

In a telephone interview Wednesday, he said he’s offered to move the Scout House to a city park that’s close enough for the rickety building to be moved in one piece. That offer is good until Aug. 16.

But local supporters want it to stay where it is.

“We would very much like to preserve the whole thing,” Bird told the Peninsula Daily News.