Now that KPTZ 91.9 FM is broadcasting from Building 305 in Fort Worden State Park, the city of Port Townsend will have a vacancy to fill in the portable building on its Mountain View campus.

Carrie Hite, director of parks and recreation strategy for the city of Port Townsend, spoke with The Leader about the process they expect to follow in searching for a prospective tenant.

Hite anticipates the radio station should finish clearing the last of its belongings out of its former space no later than the close of July or August, and the city plans to work with a scoring committee, composed of the Mountain View campus’ existing tenants, so their new neighbor will complement their services.

Hite noted that those existing tenants include an array of organizations devoted to community service and human services, including the YMCA, the Red Cross, Dove House and the Port Townsend Food Bank, as well as the city of Port Townsend’s Police Department and Parks, Recreation and Community Services, so they wouldn’t want a new tenant to duplicate any of those services.

“We already have a charitable clothing closet on site, so we wouldn’t want a similar organization competing with it as its neighbor,” Hite said.

Hite explained that the city plans to release other criteria for prospective Mountain View campus tenants to the public shortly, along with the channels through which they could submit applications, after which a decision could be reached, regarding a new tenant, as soon as the month of September.

“These will be the same procedures we’ll be using to fill any future vacancies as well,” Hite said.

Hite elaborated that the city prices its vacancies at the Mountain View campus by their square footage and by what types of spaces they are, so she tentatively estimated that the portable building formerly occupied by KPTZ — as a finished installation, as opposed to an unfinished warehouse space — could run between $1,200 to $1,300 in rent per year.

Leases at the Mountain View campus are available at subsidized rates to organizations that the city determines provide services to the community.

Any tenant would likewise be accountable for paying the cost of utilities, although Hite noted that the city would also pay a portion of those utility costs.

Hite estimated that the utility bills to KPTZ ran roughly around $5,000 per year, although she also acknowledged that few other tenants are likely to operate as much round-the-clock energy-consuming electronic equipment as the radio station did.

As such, Hite estimated that other tenants might find themselves paying utility costs of between $3,000 to $4,000 per year, but she emphasized that all of her estimates are approximate and non-binding.

Hite had already asked Port Townsend City Council members on July 1 what questions they would want to ask applicants, and had forecast that a finalized Request For Proposal (RFP) document — containing the scoring criteria the committee would use to score and select a future tenant — would be released later this month.

A draft version of the RFP included questions about prospective tenants’ hours of operation, the years they’ve been in business, their rental histories, and their ability to afford three years of rent, plus a leasehold excise tax of 12.8%.