Crater Lake National Park: Administrative History by Harlan D. Unrau and Stephen Mark, 1987
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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Planning and Development at Rim Village: 1886 – present
H. Implementing the Plan: 1988-1989
At first it seemed that the DCP was going to be relatively easy to implement and would go according to a construction schedule developed by the Denver Service Center. Except for the additional lodging planned for Rim Village, most of the proposed redevelopment work had first been outlined by DSC in 1976. But various scenarios for parking, transportation systems, and the siting of the new hotel began to complicate planning efforts.
On December 1, 1988, three structures in Rim Village were listed on the National Register of Historic Places as part of a national historic district in the park. Two of the buildings (the comfort station on the plaza and the one behind the cafeteria) had been slated for removal in the DCP. The National Register designation played a key role in the funding for a cultural landscape report about the site which was begun in June 1989. Its purpose was to give planners context about Rim Village’s historic development and its function as a designed landscape so that important site features could be protected and any adverse effects brought on by the redevelopment work mitigated.
The National Register designation was an insignificant complication to the project schedule compared to the structural condition of the Crater Lake Lodge. After barely avoiding closure in 1988, consulting engineers recommended that the lodge not be opened the following year. Odegaard made the decision to close the lodge on May 26, 1989, and immediately faced the problem of the 1990 NPS budget having no money for the Rim Village redevelopment project. Funds were restored through the efforts of the Oregon Congressional delegation in June, primarily to allow the lodge’s rehabilitation to be accelerated.
Much of the Rim Village planning, however, centered on the new hotel because it was to be the hub of the redevelopment. Questions continued to arise about how much parking was needed for a building with year round lodging. This led to extended discussion of transportation systems, but planners expressed their fears that the associated expense would leave the new hotel without a constituency. Public support for a rehabilitated Crater Lake Lodge continued to drive Congressional backing for the entire redevelopment package, however. Despite some evidence that 1989 summer tourism at Crater Lake had been unaffected by the lodge’s closure, Fiscal Year 1990 dawned with the expectation that work on site planning for the new hotel and the accelerated rehabilitation of the old lodge could be done concurrently.
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