The Port of Astoria’s failure to maintain its part of the Red Lion Inn building contributed to the hotel’s recent decision to suspend operations through March and lay off 24 employees.

Last month, one of the hotel’s balconies collapsed and sent five people into the water below. An engineering survey completed afterward concluded some parts of the building are structurally unsound and in need of repair.

Some parts, such as the balconies, are Red Lion’s responsibility. But other parts belong to the Port.

At a Port Commission meeting Tuesday, Port Executive Director Jack Crider and Tia Degerstedt, general manager of the?Red Lion Inn, explained how the complexities of the hotel’s lease arrangement with the Port affect the repair effort.

The building is owned by the Port and leased to the New York real estate investment trust iStar Financial until 2013; Red Lion manages the 122 hotel rooms inside. The Port is responsible for the old restaurant and the pilings underneath and is required to keep them in similar condition to the rest of the building.

“That makes things a little complicated in terms of figuring out the extent of the repairs,” Degerstedt said.

The Red?Lion company had an engineer survey the entire building and found potential structural defects underneath a section of the building that the Port stopped maintaining when plans for a conference center were moving forward in 2000. But the conference center was never built, and that part of the building continues to rot.

The abandoned and crumbling portion of the building used to house the Seafare restaurant, a coffee shop and a bar, Crider said.

“The whole front of it needs to be completely torn off and replaced,”?he said. “Where we’re seeing any kind of potential structural damage is around here, toward the end. … Their engineers are concerned that since they’re connected, if we have a catastrophic failure they’re going to be affected. … You can understand their predicament.”

Crider said he’s thinking about repairing the portion of the building where the coffee shop and bar used to be, which is the part closest to the marina entrance, and tearing down the old restaurant, leaving an open deck. Because of the short term left on the building’s lease, he said, he doesn’t expect the Port will be able to attract a tenant for the dining hall.

“It’s hard for me to understand that the restaurant part, which has been unoccupied for several years, is the main cause of the closure,” said Commissioner Floyd Holcom. “Why do we still have the restaurant on the Red?Lion’s lease?”

Degerstedt said her company was told that part of the building was going to be torn down for the conference center.

“It’s a very complicated lease, and Red Lion wants to make sure before we invest anything more into the hotel that the restaurant isn’t threatening,” she said. “We’d like to have a full-service hotel again.”

The Port has hired its own engineers to assess the damage and help determine the best course of action.

“We’ll have the battle of the engineers,” Crider said.

In other business, the board:

? voted unanimously to give up a legacy highway access point on East Harbor Drive that only allows access for farming so that Warrenton Fiber can trade it for a new access point across from the Neptune Drive intersection. The company is planning to build an access road to 10 acres of undeveloped property on the land north of the highway.

? heard reports of November storm damage to the foundation of the Bornstein Seafoods processing plant between piers 1 and 2 and to the Navy’s Sea Fighter vessel, which was docked on the end of Pier 2, where the wind and swells sent it banging up against the pier and punched a 3-foot by 8-foot hole in the hull.