The crown jewel of historic downtown Port Townsend will go up for auction at the Jefferson County Courthouse in April.

The Hastings Building, an iconic Victorian three-story structure that The Leader called “the most elegant building in the city” when it was under construction in 1889, will be sold to the highest bidder at 11 a.m. Friday, April 2.

The foreclosure sale was ordered by a Jefferson County Superior Court judge last year after the owners of the landmark fell behind in payments on a $3.3 million loan that was made to its owners, Hastings Estate Company and Hastings Master Tenant.

The Hastings Building, located at the corner of Water and Taylor streets, is still owned by the family that built it, the Hastings family.

The present generation of the family have been working for the past 15 years to restore the building and construct a new building next door that would allow the Hastings Building to be restored.

Harry Dudley, the president of Hastings Estate Company, is the great-great-grandson of Lucinda Hastings, the widow of Loren B. Hastings (one of Port Townsend’s four original pioneers in the 1850s).

Dudley, along with Lucinda Eubank, a great-great-granddaughter of L.B. and Lucinda Hastings, are the sole owners of Hastings Estate Company, which was formed in 1890 by Lucinda Hastings. They began working to save the historic building in 2006 after a storm damaged the pilings supporting the adjacent Surf Restaurant & Bar in 2005.

The family has invested more than $1.1 million of their personal funds toward the project and permits for Hastings Landing Inn, a 79-room boutique hotel that would be built behind the existing building next to Port Townsend Bay.

Members of the Hastings family declined to comment on the upcoming sale, citing the current lawsuit.

But in court papers, Dudley said a series of negative events brought the project to “a temporary standstill.”

Those setbacks include the Great Recession that ended in 2013, as well as a property-line lawsuit from a neighboring business owner and challenges over claims of environmental impacts from the project — “even though [the Department of Ecology] and other local, state and federal agencies had fully vetted the project,” Dudley noted in court documents.

Dudley said the COVID-19 pandemic has also “caused lenders to be very circumspect about real estate development loans.”  

The restoration project is at risk if the adjoining inn can’t be built and the property is sold, Dudley added.

“Without the additional new structure providing both economic and structural support, the iconic interior of the Hastings Building would need to be modernized to gain back areas that are presently unusable due to the design. That modernization would destroy its historic significance,” Dudley said in a declaration to stop the sale.

“Gutting the interior to make it economically efficient would be the only economically viable alternative for the property if the adjacent modern building cannot be built,” he added. “A ‘teardown’ is probably the most likely result if a Trustee’s Sale results in a change of ownership from the Hastings family members (who view the property as a significant part of their heritage) to some business entity looking only to make a profit.”

Dudley said the family also had a substantial equity in the building that would be lost if it were sold. At the time of Dudley’s declaration last July, the primary debt on the property to Pender West Credit is $3.8 million, but the property had been appraised for an “as is” value of $6.8 million in October 2017.

Saving the Hastings Building would also give an economic boost to Port Townsend, Dudley noted. 

Between 45 to 60 people would be needed for the construction project for up to two years, and after the Hasting Landings Inn is finished, the hotel, restaurant and bar would bring another 15 to 18 jobs. A restaurant would mean another 20 or so jobs, he added.

The project would be a “destination resort,” and the restored building would also be a tourist attraction.

Others involved in the preservation of Jefferson County history have voiced support for saving the Hastings Building and giving Hastings Estate Company more time to secure funding to pay off its lender.

JoAnn Bussa, a trustee for the Jefferson County Historical Society, said in a court filing that she personally was concerned about the fate of the Hastings Building.

It was the only structure in the Downtown Historical district that was designated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as “pivotal,” Bussa explained, “which is the most important designation for an historic structure.”

“It is an outstanding example of Victorian architecture and can be considered the ‘crown jewel’ of Port Townsend’s many historic buildings,” she continued.

The total owed on the property is $4.1 million, according to a legal notice published in advance of the April 2 sale.

"If the property is sold at a foreclosure sale, it seems to me quite unlikely that the buyer at the sale is going to be personally or financially motivated to restore the building to the same high standards as the Hastings family," Bussa added.