White Salmon looks for child care, youth center facility with meeting space
By Ken Park
The City of White Salmon is exploring three potential locations for a community center that would meet several community needs.
With costs in the millions of dollars, city officials will be looking for grants to purchase and rehabilitate properties that will provide essential community services such as child care, a youth center and multi-purpose rooms that could provide space for community gatherings.
Mountain View Grange hall on main street is being considered for a community center in White Salmon.
The identified locations are the Grange Hall on Main Street, the Park Building at Rhinegarten Park, and the parking lot across from Whitson Elementary School.
The City identified the need for a community center in 2022 and began working with ARC Architects, a Seattle-based group, on a feasibility study of potential sites and budget considerations.
Mayor Marla Keethler
“I view this presentation tonight as the beginning of an ongoing conversation with the council,” Mayor Marla Keethler said at the City's Nov. 1 meeting.
The Park Building at Rhinegarten Park in White Salmon is another option for a community Center.
The design team from ARC worked with the city on potential programs, space options, multi-purpose rooms, a youth center, and childcare facilities.
The City of White Salmon is considering using the aforementioned existing properties for some of these spaces to be conservative about the size and cost of building a new community center.
The team from ARC developed site and space plans for each location and identified third-party capital cost estimates.
“We are in the middle of budget season, and we have limited capabilities for funding from the ground up brand new projects as the city alone,” Keethler said. “So this was trying to identify what available space we have if we wanted to build something new that met some of the community center needs, but also how else could we engage with some partners in the community to realize improvements to existing spaces to meet some of these needs as well.”
Keethler noted that a critical partner in this process would be the White Salmon Valley School District, which owns the Park Building in Rhinegarten Park and has at times leased the space to several tenants, including the Bingen-White Salmon Police Department and Insitu.
Keethler plans to make a presentation to the WSVSD at its next meeting.
The Park Building was identified as a good potential location for the youth center and childcare facilities due to its proximity to Whitson Elementary School and its existing spaces requiring minimum renovation to be used as a youth center and childcare facility.
The estimated total cost for the youth center would be $476,000 with $340,000 in hard costs, and the estimated cost for the childcare facilities would be $1.3 million with $950,000 in hard costs.
Though not currently in the city limits, the Mt. View Grange #98 Hall was identified as an excellent potential location due to its ability to host large gatherings on both levels and its potential to have a small kitchen built for those gatherings.
“It's a good candidate for shared use space, which allows it to continue to operate for Grange events as well as city events,” Keethler said.
The city would partner with the Grange on maintenance and improvements.
The estimated cost for renovations to the Grange is $1.05 million, with $750,000 in hard costs.
It is anticipated that the Mt. View Grange will be annexed into the city in the coming months.
“We would reengage with the Grange hall once annexation into the city grows through and look in more detail what those improvements are and balancing across the new additions. in the community center and what we might be doing in the Park Building,” Keethler said.
The parking lot across from Whitson Elementary School is the third option White Salmon Council is looking at for a community Center.
The final location is an empty lot on the 400 block of Main Street in White Salmon, which is currently used as extra parking for Whitson Elementary and the United Methodist Church.
This site was identified as the potential location of a new building that could serve other community center needs, such as classrooms, meeting rooms, exercise rooms, teaching kitchens, etc., ass well as house the new city council chambers.
The estimated cost for this new building is $11.2 million, with $8 million in hard costs.
“The hope is we are prioritizing just on urgent of need would be to rank the youth center as number one, and then early childcare is number two, based on how we could structure the ask for funding and what might be available,” Keethler said.
The city would pursue several state and federal grants to fund these projects.
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