Built for efficiency, used for decades: Moab’s National Park Service headquarters faces uncertain future

When staff from the National Park Service’s Southeast Utah Group moved into a new headquarters on Moab’s Resource Boulevard in 1994, it marked a turning point in how the agency managed some of the region’s most visited national parks and monuments.

The Southeast Utah Group — formed in 1967 to jointly oversee Arches and Canyonlands national parks and Natural Bridges National Monument — added Hovenweep National Monument in 1998. Until 1994, its operations were housed in multiple separate facilities across Moab. The newly built 35,000-square-foot office, leased from a private owner through the General Services Administration on behalf of the Park Service, brought those operations under one roof for the first time.

Roughly 65 to 70 employees worked for the Southeast Utah Group in the early 1990s, according to Southeast Utah Group spokesperson Karen Henker. Former staff said the transition was necessary to accommodate a growing workforce and improve communication across divisions.

“[The previous setup] was unworkable,” said Walt Dabney, who served as superintendent of the Southeast Utah Group from 1991 to 1999.

By consolidating teams from five core divisions and centralizing specialized functions like river operations, GIS mapping and museum curation, Dabney said the new facility significantly improved coordination and day-to-day operations.

“All of that went into one building and we never looked back,” he said. “It was just such a positive change in the efficiency of running the operation.”

Now, more than 30 years later, the future of the building is in question.

The Moab headquarters is among hundreds of federally leased properties under review by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE — a Trump administration initiative with a broad mandate to eliminate what it deems wasteful federal spending. One of its priorities is reducing the government’s leased office footprint. The building’s lease, which Henker confirmed costs about $805,000 annually, is set to expire next April.

As of May 5, the DOGE website still lists the Moab property among 592 leases marked for potential termination. Though the listing is now categorized under the Geological Survey, it matches the square footage, location and estimated savings previously tied to the Park Service office.

DOGE initially identified 793 leases for termination in early March. As of May 5, that number had dropped to 592 — but the NPS headquarters property remains on the list. DOGE estimates a total savings of $291 million if the listed leases are allowed to expire.

A separate 4,750-square-foot USGS lease in Moab also appears on the list, though it is not clearly labeled. All three of Moab’s federal offices — the NPS headquarters, the USGS Water Science Center and the USGS Southwest Biological Science Center — were flagged in a congressional report tracking the potential fallout of the federal lease review.

In April, the Grand County Commission approved a letter urging Utah’s congressional delegation to closely evaluate the potential closure of the three Moab-based federal offices, citing concerns about public safety, land management and the local tourism economy.

The National Park Service’s national public affairs office declined to comment directly on the Moab facility’s status or its owner. In a previously issued statement, the agency said it was “working with GSA to ensure facilities or alternative options will be available” and emphasized a broader goal to “maximize resources, cut waste and enhance operational effectiveness.”

Centralized operations, modern support

Today, the Resource Boulevard headquarters houses about 50 NPS employees and roughly 20 from the USGS Southwest Biological Science Center, according to Henker. The two agencies operate independently but frequently collaborate on land and resource management.

Henker said the facility supports all five of the Park Service’s core divisions — administration, interpretation, visitor and resource protection, maintenance, and resource stewardship and science. Specialized programs such as river safety, GIS mapping, permit processing, compliance review and museum collections management are also based there.

The building includes climate-controlled collections rooms that house archeological artifacts, herbarium sheets, and biological, geological and paleontological specimens. It also stores entomology collections from Capitol Reef National Park. While some cultural objects were relocated offsite in 2016 due to space limitations, Henker said the facility continues to support research access, digital archiving and records management.

Its vehicle bays store equipment for canyon and river operations, including snowplows, rescue boats and trucks used throughout the Southeast Utah Group’s parks.

“It has everything you need to run these parks efficiently,” said Larry Frederick, who served as chief of interpretation at Canyonlands from 1988 to 1996. “It was designed for us.”

From scattered offices to a unified headquarters

Before the 1994 move to Resource Boulevard, Southeast Utah Group operations were spread across multiple locations in and around Moab. Much of the staff worked out of what is now the Moab Community Resource Center, while maintenance crews operated from a location on Kane Creek Boulevard and curatorial staff were based in a converted residence at Arches National Park.

“It was very cramped,” Dabney said. “We were trying to do maintenance almost under a shade tree. River equipment, dump trucks, generators — there was no central location to work on them.”

Dabney said the new facility brought core teams under one roof — including administration, interpretation, visitor protection, maintenance, science and a range of specialized support roles — enabling closer coordination, more effective decision-making and improved training.

“It provided the ability to reduce the management overhead, some of the scattered park areas and consolidate that in one location, which was much more efficient,” he said.

For Vicki Webster, who was the Southeast Utah Group museum curator during the transition, the most significant improvement was finally having a secure, climate-controlled space to store and manage museum collections — a basic standard they hadn’t been able to meet in previous locations. Sensitive materials like archeological artifacts, herbarium samples and biological specimens require stable humidity and temperature, as well as proper fire suppression and security.

“Prior to that, I had an office out at Arches, and the museum collection was in an inadequate, non-climate-controlled facility — it was substandard,” Webster said. “So when we moved into the new facility, we were meeting basic standards for museum and archive storage that we had not been meeting prior to that.”

Webster said the consolidated facility also helped streamline access for researchers, allowing cross-park resources to be housed in one location — from cowboy camp artifacts from Canyonlands to bat specimens and regional herbarium records.

Frederick said the shift was about more than convenience. It acknowledged the scale and complexity the Southeast Utah Group had grown into.

“It was designed for the Park Service — it has bays for the boats, and it has bays for maintenance and it has a secure storage room for the archives and collection,” he said. “It’s wired for all the technology that operations demand today.”

He added having all divisions in one building also fostered collaboration and quicker decision-making.

“If you needed to talk to someone, you went down the hall and talked to them instead of driving across town,” he said. “And it was a more efficient way to do business.”

A structure not widely replicated

The Southeast Utah Group’s administrative model — with one office overseeing four park units — remains relatively uncommon within the National Park Service. According to Henker, the group currently includes about 171 employees across Arches, Canyonlands, Natural Bridges and Hovenweep, including 43 seasonal staff.

The building underwent a series of renovations in 2016 and 2017 to improve functionality. Henker said the upgrades included enhanced HVAC systems for collections rooms, added security features, reconfigured office spaces and the installation of a walk-up permit window for public access.

The General Services Administration, which manages the lease on behalf of the Park Service, did not respond to questions from The Times-Independent regarding the building’s ownership or who funded the renovations. A Freedom of Information Act request has been submitted.

What happens if the lease ends?

With the lease scheduled to expire in less than a year and no publicly identified replacement, former staff and local officials have voiced concern about the consequences of losing the facility.

“There’s not another building like it locally,” said Webster. “You’d have to split up operations. It would be inefficient at best — and at worst, some programs might just disappear.”

Frederick echoed that concern, pointing to the logistical challenge of relocating such a complex operation.

“To move them and re-establish them someplace else would be a very expensive operation,” he said. “I don’t think the Moab community wants headquarters to move to San Juan County … that would be a real disservice to employees, to the community and to our parks and visitors to move farther away from Arches.”

If the lease isn’t renewed, Dabney believes it would be an “absolute disaster.”

“A whole lot of things that are now getting done efficiently would be really difficult to get done … it’s nonsensical and it just will not work,” he said.

Some leases originally listed for termination by DOGE have since been removed, reportedly following political or agency intervention. However, the agency has not provided clear justifications for which leases remain under review. DOGE has declined to release detailed criteria for its decisions, drawing criticism from local officials and public land advocates.

“It seems to me that somebody’s just taking a look at a list and saying, ‘Oh, these are a bunch of federal leases — let’s get rid of them,’” Frederick said. “There’s no rationale. There’s no thinking. There’s no process in place to really work through this decision. I think it would be extremely disruptive to try to move things and find someplace else to go.”

For those who helped establish the Moab headquarters, the concern goes beyond cost or square footage. Webster, who helped design the facility’s collections areas, said it was purpose-built for the region’s park operations.

“It was created in order to be more efficient, and it was built specifically for the needs of the local park operations,” Webster said. “That’s my biggest concern if they were to drop the lease — what would they do that would be more efficient than what they have right now? I believe they don’t have an answer to that.”

This story was first published by The Times-Independent.