Feds extend indefinitely the auction end date for Pacific Grove NOAA building.

The former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration building in Pacific Grove is still on the auction block as of today, but a last-minute push by Congressman Jimmy Panetta (D-Carmel Valley) has resulted in an indefinite extension of the auction's end date.

That's good news for the people behind an effort to save the building and convert it into the proposed Center for Ocean, Art, Science and Technology, or COAST.

"It buys us time," says Stephen Hauk, the P.G. art gallery owner who initially dreamed of such a center. He found allies locally and out of the area who mobilized to save the building which is wrapped at the top with murals of Monterey Bay sea life created by artist Ray Troll.

COAST organizers turned to Panetta for help. He's been working to save the building from auction since last year, when he was able to persuade the General Services Administration to remove the building from a bulk sale with 11 other federal properties last summer.

Despite that momentary win, the GSA announced later it was putting up the 4.3 acre property it dubbed "Azul Bay" up for auction from Jan. 31-March 9. 

"Considering this fast-approaching sale, and an unsatisfactory response from GSA following my prior objections, I feel compelled to elevate concerns from my constituents who have been long requesting a different approach," Panetta wrote in a letter to OMB Acting Director Shalanda Young on Jan. 11.

In a phone call with Young and a GSA official on Friday, Jan. 25, Panetta secured an agreement to extend the auction's end date from March 9 to an unspecified date. They also agreed to investigate the process by which the NOAA building was placed up for auction.

It's unclear why the process followed by federal authorities when decommissioning a federal building wasn't adhered to back when NOAA announced approximately a decade ago that it would be leaving the P.G. site.

Usually when a federal agency gives up using a building it's offered to other federal agencies, then state agencies and finally municipalities. The Pacific Grove City Council passed a resolution in 2012 asking for the building to be conveyed to the city. The building stopped being used by any federal agencies in 2014.

In December 2016 Congress passed the Federal Assets Sale Transfer Act, FASTA, designed to fast track the sales of federal properties. A COAST organizer and oceanographer Chuck Greene, director of the Ocean Resources and Ecosystems Program at Cornell University, told the Weekly last year that the NOAA building sat empty with no movement toward selling it until 2020, when NOAA handed the building over to the GSA. It was placed in a sales portfolio under FASTA "and all of a sudden our hands were tied," he said.

Panetta appears to be attempting to untie those hands, asking for a formal review of why the building was never offered to state or local agencies before FASTA was passed, especially the city of P.G. which formally expressed interest. 

He pointed out in his Jan. 11 letter that the Public Buildings Reform Board determined in December that the NOAA building was not a "high value asset." The board questioned why the building was included in a portfolio as a high value asset under FASTA.

“I am continuing my outreach to the administration to ensure that any sale of the Pacific Grove NOAA facility is done in a way that is transparent, legal, and legitimate, with proper outreach that ensures our community has a say in how this property will be transferred,” said Rep. Panetta in a statement released just before the agreement was struck to delay the auction.

“Based on our investigation and work, it is apparent that the auction has not met those standards, risking the public trust that we put into our government to be responsive to the people it serves," he said.