When the Wyoming Game and Fish Department eventually moves to a new office north of Cody, Park County commissioners will become the owners of the agency’s current building south of town.

The planned move for the Game and Fish’s regional office is still a couple years off, but commissioners are already weighing their options — including the possibility of selling the building into private hands.

The Game and Fish office sits on land the federal government gave to Park County back in the 1900s. However, the gift came with some strings attached.

Restrictions placed on the deed say the county can only use the land for public recreation or for governmental purposes, said Commissioner Lee Livingston. The county could also return the land to the federal government, “which I don’t think we want to do,” Livingston said at the board’s Aug. 20 meeting.

He has instead been discussing a fourth option: seeing what it would take to have the deed restrictions removed. That option, commissioners said, would open the door to selling or renting the property to anyone — including private businesses.

Livingston said the county might have to pay to have that deed work done.

“If we want to move forward with disposing of that land, there’s hoops we have to jump through,” he warned, adding that Bureau of Land Management staff are looking into it.

The 49.2-acre parcel along Wyo. Highway 120 south of Cody includes not only the Game and Fish office but also the county’s road and bridge shop for the Cody area. The Game and Fish is leasing part of the land from the county for essentially nothing. But while the rent is cheap, the department says it’s outgrown the 1979 building, which serves as the agency’s headquarters for the Big Horn Basin. That’s why the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission recently agreed to purchase a 22-acre parcel of land along Wyo. Highway 120 north of Cody, near Road 2AB. The department is paying $350,000 to buy the private land from Park County Commissioner Joe Tilden.

Although the land is in hand, the Game and Fish has said that it won’t break ground on the new facility until the spring of 2021 at the earliest.

“So we have time,” Commission Chairman Jake Fulkerson said at last month’s meeting, “but it will probably take us that long to get our arms around it.”

“That’s why I wanted to start the ball rolling now,” said Livingston, deadpanning, “I mean, it might surprise, but things don’t move very fast, especially at the federal government level.”