Sue Nelson, right, retires this month as the Leases and Contracts manager for the Port of Port Townsend, ending 24 years with the Port. Heron Scott, left, former manager of the Port Townsend School of Woodworking, will replace her.
When Sue Nelson steps away from her work at the Port of Port Townsend on June 27, it will mark the end of almost a quarter century of service.
After many years as executive assistant to a succession of Port managers, Nelson has spent the last six years in the crucial job of managing the Port’s many leases with private businesses, and contracts. She estimates the Port has 130 leases, mostly with private businesses, and numerous contracts.
She rides herd on all of them, responsible for ensuring the terms are clear, the payments are made, and the customers are – mostly – happy.
The Port plans an open house on June 27 starting at 2:30 p.m. with food and drink provided, to celebrate her, in the Administration Building.
The Port moved quickly to find her replacement for this critical work, and it is someone already known to many local residents. Until recently, Heron Scott managed the Port Townsend School of Woodworking at Fort Worden State Park. He stepped down several months ago, waiting for the right opportunity.
As the new Lease and Contracts Administrator, Scott has already started working with Nelson.
Nelson is a longtime county resident, moving to Port Ludlow in 1993 and to Port Townsend in 2003. Her introduction to a Port-owned property came in 1998 when she was hired as office manager/dispatcher by Port Townsend Airways at the Jefferson County International Airport. She impressed the people at Island Air so much that, two years later, they hired her and agreed to fly her every day up to Friday Harbor and back.
In 2001, Don Taylor, then finance manager at the Port, had seen enough to offer her a Port job. At first it was in the accounting department, but Port Executive Director Larry Crockett soon asked her to be his executive assistant. When Crockett left in 2016, Nelson stayed in place for his replacement, Sam Gibboney. When Gibboney left in 2018, Nelson held the same job with Jim Pivarnik. She also was the Port’s Public Records Officer and took meeting minutes.
It was Pivarnik who realized the Port needed a dedicated staffer to manage the myriad of leases and contracts. He asked Nelson to become the Port’s first-ever lease manager in 2019. At the time, Nelson recalled, the Port had 45-plus expired leases that needed new agreements.
Today, the Port is on top of its many leases and contracts, with strong communications with the tenants and others in the Port, including accounting and maintenance. Nelson admitted that the toughest part of her job is imposing inflation-based lease rate hikes on tenants, many of whom she knows well by now, while at the same time she is aware of the Port’s obligation to taxpayers.
Those moments are outweighed by the many benefits of the job, Nelson said.
“I’m so appreciative of this job,” she said. “It’s a great job with good benefits and a pension, and I get to live in Port Townsend.” A special treat is being able to walk around in Port-owned buildings. “I enjoy walking through our many historical buildings and observing the day-to-day work our talented tenants do,” she said. When she started, she was about the youngest Port employee, and today she is one of the oldest. She has seen first-hand the transition now underway between many of the older shipwrights and a new generation now in place.
Some of her familiarity with boatbuilders came from her husband, Ben Tyler, for 28 years a co-owner of the Port Townsend Shipwrights Co-op. They’ve been together for 21 years, married for 11. Tyler is now a woodworker and built up a national reputation for the quality of his duck calls.
Another highlight, she said, is her relationship with Port staff. She singled out Deputy Director Eric Toews as a particularly supportive and valuable friend, mentor and boss.
Upon retirement, Nelson expects to have the summer off for hiking, travel and household projects. This fall she expects to work part-time at the airport.
“It’s the completion of my full circle,” she said, recalling that she started at the airport in 1998.