The potential loss of the Search and Rescue equipment facility has brought greater communication between the county and the nonprofit.
While the future of Whatcom County Search and Rescue’s equipment building at 1041 West Smith Road in Bellingham — also known as the Northwest Annex — is still unknown, Whatcom County admitted the all-volunteer nonprofit organization should have been included in the planning process and pledged to work more closely in the future.
For now, a redevelopment project has been put on hold in place of greater county priorities, but Whatcom County Executive’s Office public affairs manager Jed Holmes assures Search and Rescue will not go “homeless.”
Whatcom County Search and Rescue was officially established in 1970, an umbrella organization tying the Search and Rescue Council, Women’s Search and Rescue Auxiliary, Explorers Search and Rescue, Bellingham Mountain Rescue and the 4×4 unit. At the time, these entities met at the Whatcom County courthouse and stored equipment at the homes of individual members. In 1982, permitting began for the construction of the building on Smith Road, to be operational by 1984. The building was paid for with donor funds.
While Search and Rescue paid for and built the building, the county owned the land and made an agreement to take ownership of it to “protect public interest,” Holmes said.
While Search and Rescue performs “a great public service,” as a nonprofit, the county cannot just give money to it without something in return, called consideration in contract law.
Any payment between the two organizations must come through a reciprocal contract, not a gift with tax dollars, Holmes said.
The Skagit County Search and Rescue building is in Bayview. Like Whatcom, it is utilized by a nonprofit organization though the building is owned by the county. According to Skagit Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Paul Wolfe, one side of the building is for the Sheriff’s Office and serves as a patrol room for deputies to work out of. The other side is an open room that can be reserved for training and is used by Search and Rescue for storage. Other than the state mandate, there is no official contract between the two entities.
San Juan County does not partner with a nonprofit for search and rescue operations. According to communications coordinator Erin Andrews, the sheriff’s office, local fire districts and EMS teams serve as first responders and conduct search and rescue operations, supported by Coast Guard and other jurisdictions as needed.
Pulling the rug
In 2023, Whatcom County alerted Whatcom Search and Rescue of plans to redevelop the building and said the nonprofit had to move by the end of the year.
“Everybody panicked because we’re an all-volunteer organization and we need our building to be able to operate,” said Gwynne Gruizenga-Top, building committee chair for Whatcom Search and Rescue.
According to Holmes, the first idea to redevelop the Northwest Annex came over a decade ago, along with a series of projects addressing redevelopment needs. This involved a roundabout at the corner of Smith Road and additional storage buildings. However, when the county received COVID response funding, a greater priority became social services, child care and court backlog.
Post-COVID, the county received real estate excise tax money and put it toward infrastructure and facilities projects. However, at that time, cost of construction went up dramatically.
Annex redevelopment would cost $50–60 million, and other capital projects — purchasing a building from Western Washington University to host planning and development services and leasing a new sheriff’s office — took care of some of the needs once placed on the Northwest Annex.
“We have a sheriff’s office, planning development services, building a new jail, all these things that are lining up and the math didn’t add up the way we had initially contemplated it,” Holmes said. “Go back a little bit, I think Search and Rescue, they were never brought into those discussions about, why do we need to redevelop it? They were left out of that process. That was certainly a mistake on the county’s part.”
According to Gruizenga-Top, “It was also about that time when the county realized they had no money, that the sheriff’s office was in a dungeon with literally poop running down the walls. And that’s probably a better way to spend their money than to build a coffee shop for county employees.”
The coffee conundrum
In June 2024, it looked like the county was finally able to address the Northwest Annex redevelopment.
“About a year and a half ahead of (June), we told Search and Rescue, oh, by the way, we’ve got these plans. And we might need you out by a certain date,” said Holmes. “And that was a big blow to them.”
One of the biggest “blows,” according to Gruizenga-Top, was finding plans that the Search and Rescue equipment building may be turned into a coffee shop.
Holmes said that the Northwest Annex is “kind of out there in the middle of nowhere” and a county official proposed putting a coffee shop in the facility. The Whatcom County District Court once had a coffee shop on the second floor for this reason, he said.
“At some point in the planning, a council member or someone said, well, why don’t you do that? And on some drawing, someone said, ‘oh, that looks like a reasonable place for it to go.’ That was very much the concept level. It wasn’t like, ‘let’s get rid of Search and Rescue and add a coffee stand’,” he said.
According to Gruizenga-Top, this contention was one of the main turning points in the discussion. “Honestly, I shamed them to be perfectly blunt.”
“Once I went very public about the fact that they were going to tear our building down to build a coffee shop, which was ridiculous, they really backed down and started saying, ‘OK, let’s look at other alternatives,’” she said.
In the county’s perspective, the issue was more complicated, Holmes said.
“I keep on hearing that back, and that stuck with them pretty much like how crazy we are as administrators and as a sign that we don’t value them, which completely isn’t the case,” he said. “They’re stuck in this limbo where they’re a volunteer-based organization, so we can’t pay them for services if they’re volunteering. It’s kind of one of the basic principles of — or limitations of —government.”
This led to years of negotiations, and the county officially put redevelopment on hold this past summer.
A need for rescue
Washington law requires county sheriff’s departments to establish a search and rescue team. Bill Elfo, who retired as sheriff in 2023, estimated that in worker hours and equipment cost, Whatcom Search and Rescue saves the county at least $2 million per year.
The two organizations have an informal agreement but no official contract. The public doesn’t pay for additional on-call rescue professionals, Holmes said.
“When something bad happens, when you have a flood or something, people look around and say, ‘where’s the government? Where they’re not showing up for us’,” he said. “But we don’t have that much with government where you have rescue people sitting around.”
In 2025, 173 volunteers stepped up to work for the Whatcom County Search and Rescue, completing 14,298 training hours and 3,939 hours engaged in search and rescue operations.
“We had a lot of involvement with the flood,” Gruizenga-Top said. “That is something that we train for a lot because it’s a reality in Whatcom County. Our members put in a lot of hours for that.”
Both Holmes and Gruizenga-Top acknowledged the commitment to a greater partnership.
“People who on their weekends or they take a day off or they spend their time, the sense I get that they’re feeling undervalued, underappreciated. And that’s not the case,” Holmes said. “We really value what they do. As a clumsy organization, not informing them in a timely manner about things that are really important to them, people who were in certain positions maybe should have given thought to that. And we missed that. We accept responsibility for that, that gap in communication that should have been better.”
Gruizenga-Top said, “We now have a much better relationship with the county, and I believe that everyone understands each other’s position and is dedicated to working cooperatively for the benefit of Whatcom County citizens.”
In search of a forever home
While Whatcom County does not yet have an ultimate answer for the current Search and Rescue property, “It’s not like we’re going to wipe them to the side and say, ‘Ok, we’re just not going to think about your needs’,” Holmes said. “We’re going to want to do that responsibly. It’s been millions and millions. There’s got to be a process to it. It’s got to make sense.”
Gruizenga-Top mentioned she has been discussing with investors about a future facility, but the organization still lingers in uncertainty.
“For now, what we do know is that the county building project is on hold indefinitely, and we are not imminently at risk of losing our building. But the threat of losing our building did make us aware that we have to be more forward thinking.”
— By Sam Fletcher
Also read in Salish Current:
• “Neighbors helping neighbors against wildfire risk,” May 5, 2025
• “U.S., Canada make headway on cross-border Nooksack flood strategy,” Sept. 12, 2023
• “Office stack planned to replace historic building on onetime Poor Farm site,” May 26, 2023
• “Ice jams, snow melt, king tides combine in Marietta flood deluge,” Jan. 13, 2023
• “After the flood: still rebuilding amid uncertainty, anxiety—and community,” Nov. 17, 2022