By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews
WALDPORT – Coming up with $475,000 to buy the 2.8-acre Lincoln County School District property in downtown may be the easiest part of the city of Waldport’s latest property acquisition.
Now the city needs to mobilize the community to help clean it up, fix it up and get it ready for use.
The city signed papers and cut a check last week and the sale of the former school property was officially recorded Monday.
City manager Dann Cutter led a staff tour of the former gym, cafeteria, kitchen and community garden on Wednesday to begin work on a cleanup plan. What they saw was both intimidating and inspiring, he said.
“There’s a lot of work to do with the cleanup,” he said. But there’s lots of potential. The building is in better shape than I thought. The buying of the building is only the first step. The rest will be up to the community, contractors and grant writing.”
The school district accepted the city’s offer for the property earlier this month after a five-month on-off-on negotiation process. The property also drew the interest of Central Oregon Coast Fire & Rescue District Volunteer Association, a nonprofit which asked the district to donate it to them to use as a training center, and a Waldport business owner who told YachatsNews he offered to beat any price by the city up to $500,000.
But school superintendent Karen Gray told YachatsNews this month it went to the city “for the purpose of enhancing the livability of the city of Waldport.”
The city hopes to make the old elementary/middle school gymnasium, cafeteria and kitchen into a recreation/community center and the western anchor of the adjacent 12-acre Louis Southworth Park, which it plans to develop over the next few years. The property will add to the park’s footprint, giving it more parking and exterior restrooms.
The community garden needs major revitalization. Cutter wants to meet with garden volunteers to encourage them to conduct a major cleanup now that ownership is settled.
One day, the city hopes to build a new, modern library alongside the gym.
Using pandemic money
Cutter originally proposed a bank loan to purchase the property. But the city needed to spend a state allocation of $492,000 under the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act for infrastructure or pandemic relief by the end of June. So it will use that, Cutter said, taking it from $1.2 million in general fund reserves and saving $60,000 in interest payments.
That’s the easy part.
The property hasn’t been used since Seashore Family Literacy returned it to the school district 14 months ago. The district reinforced a sagging roof but otherwise did little to get it ready for sale, including cleaning up or removing stored materials.
The idea is to turn it into a year-round recreation/community center, Cutter said, and maybe “in a perfect world” have the gym open by the fall.
But doing so will require a lot of work by local residents. City staff will develop a plan to clean the building and create a “punch list” of small repairs to get the kitchen operable, the cafeteria useable and the gym heated, he said.
“We’ll figure out what’s treasure and what’s trash,” he said. “We have to be certain it’s clean and safe.”
Cutter said the city plans to turn to residents and community groups for help on both the cleanup of “old random stuff” like dozens of chairs, furniture and two deteriorating pianos and then ask local contractors if they can help with repairs to ceilings and walls.
“I want to ask ‘This is your community center, how will you help us make it work?’” Cutter said. “The more community help we get the faster the facility will be open.”