Cabin owners face soaring lease fees on public land

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Tucked along the shores of Washington State's Lake Wenatchee is a row of rustic cabins that were built long before this spectacular mountain lake became a recreation gold coast.

Most homeowners would welcome a spike in land value. But for the six families who own these cabins, an inverse real-estate calculus is in effect. Instead of profiting, they say they may soon have to abandon the cabins, leaving behind generations of memories.

The cabins are privately owned but are on land leased from the U.S. Forest Service. The agency recently sent notice that a long-delayed increase in annual lease fees is due - spiking fees up more than 1,000 percent, from $1,400 to more than $17,000.

Some of the 14,500 cabin owners nationwide - including 2,800 in Washington and Oregon - say they'll simply walk away.

Those bills have made the Lake Wenatchee cabins central to questions about the future of the Forest Service's 94-year-old policy of enticing middle-class families to the woods by offering cut-rate deals on land for cabins.

With fees steeply up nationwide, to as high as $76,000 a year, cabin owners wonder how many of the 14,500 cabins across the United States will still be occupied in a few years.

Not all would mourn the loss. Some environmental groups question such use of public forest land, and fiscal conservatives have viewed past lease fees as sweetheart deals benefiting just a few.

The Minard family has been among those few since 1920, when Everett "Laury" Minard's grandfather built a cabin on North Shore. Minard, 84,l a Metro bus driver, spent each summer of his childhood there, learning to drive at age 13 on the lakeshore roads. But he says he'll not pay when the fee jumps to $13,000 in January.

"I'm resigned to the fact that we won't have the cabin anymore," said Minard, of Seattle. "Losing it will be a little like dying - sad but painless. There's nothing you can do."

The Minard family built their cabin just five years after the Forest Service in 1915 welcomed private cabins on its land as a way to lure families out to forests with few roads and primitive conditions. Today, there are about 2,800 cabins scattered around Washington and Oregon national forests, including 643 in the Okanogan-Wenatchee forest.

The Forest Service leases land under the cabins for a yearly fee of 5 percent of fair market value, on renewable, transferable 20-year contracts. The agency keeps tight control, restricting everything from paint color (Forest Service brown, green or gray) to size (1,200 square feet) to satellite dishes. Owners must let the public camp around their cabins, even on the leased land.

Interpretation of "fair market value" has varied. Criticism of sweetheart deals led to more rigorous appraisals in the 1990s and a nearly 10-year moratorium on fee increases while the Forest Service installed a new law, the Cabin User Fee Fairness Act. The moratorium expired in January.

Recent reappraisals required by the law have only inflamed the situation as sales from the real-estate bubble are included. Fees are doubling in many areas, including Oregon's Lake of the Woods, while fees for some cabins near Crystal Mountain remain below $1,500.

Jim Sauser, a Forest Service official who oversees the cabin program in the Northwest, said the appraisals are time consuming and result in fees that are either too high or too low.

Few areas in the country have spiked as much as the North Shore cabins. The leases have historically been $1,400 a year or less. But a 1999 appraisal boosted fees to $17,000 by including waterfront sold during the dot-com bubble to King County's high-tech wealth. (Much of the lake is privately owned.)

That increase is being phased in - $6,600 this year, $13,000 the next and about $17,000 in 2011 - but the cabin owners, bracing for even higher fees after a new appraisal, have tried to sell. Realtor Steve Craig lists three of the cabins and estimates each lot - roughly a half-acre or less - would be worth up to $700,000 if it were private land. But with the Forest Service restrictions and lease rates, he's had few nibbles at cabins despite prices as low as $79,000.

All six of the owners contacted by The Seattle Times said they planned to not pay the fees this year or the next, breaking the lease.

Dave Carlson is in the worst spot. He bought a cabin about six years ago for more than $250,000, believing, based on disclosure from the seller and Forest Service, that fees would track the historical rate. Breaking the lease would mean losing his investment and walking away, Carlson acknowledges: "The future is looking ominous."

If the North Shore owners do abandon the cabins, the Forest Service could charge them to move or tear down the cabins and restore the land to its natural state, Sauser said. The bill would be sent to the IRS for collection, he said.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com)

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