By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews
YACHATS — Mayors, councilors, commission members and city managers have come and gone but finally after at least six years of debate, studies and budgeting the city of Yachats is seeking contractors to repair and rebuild portions of its 97-year-old Little Log Church Museum.
The city posted advertisements this week asking contractors to bid on a project that over the years has been estimated to cost anywhere from $300,000 to $500,000.
But Tim Gross of Civil West Engineering Services thinks it can be much less than that even though under state law the contractor has to pay prevailing union wages.
“It’s really a very small building,” Gross said. “But it’s just so unusual. You’ll need to have a contractor who can be flexible and creative.”
Civil West has permits in hand from Lincoln County and just needs to assign them to a contractor. Gross said it could be 6-9 months before the project is finished, but some aspects could be done quickly depending on the contractor’s schedule and late fall or winter weather.
What to do – if anything – with the old church and adjacent museum bedeviled commissions, councils and a handful of permanent and interim city managers since the city realized in 2018 how fast the church was deteriorating.
The buildings have been closed since December 2021 when the city had a contractor cover most of the church with plywood and tar paper and prop up two walls.
The Little Log Church was built with donated labor and materials in 1927 after logs were floated down the Yachats River and hauled by horses to the corner of West Third and Pontiac streets.
The Lincoln County Historical Society says the building started as an Evangelical Church and operated as a Presbyterian Church from 1950 until 1968, when the congregation moved to its new building on West Seventh Street and the historical society acquired it to operate as a museum.
The society gave it to the city of Yachats in 1986 and with the help of volunteers and a nonprofit board operated it as a museum, wedding venue and for small music performances.
In 1992 Lincoln County ordered the church closed because it was unsafe. It took two years for volunteers to fix the problems, reinforcing part of the wood foundation, replacing some log siding and re-doing parts of the interior.
The city has wrestled with what to do with the property since 2018, regularly putting aside money for potential repairs in its budget – accompanied by lots of debate and starts and stops to plans.
Fundraising by the church’s nonprofit board to help finance the restoration reached nearly $200,000 last year following the bequest of $150,000 from Betsy Price of Yachats, the former co-owner of the Rock Park Cottages who died in 2022.
Now, after studies and plans by Civil West Engineering, the city is ready to fix the building.
According to the bid advertisement placed on YachatsNews and in the Daily Journal of Commerce in Portland, the Little Log Church Museum is a single structure constructed of two distinct additions and connected by an enclosed hallway. The church itself is 817 square feet made of milled log walls supported by concrete foundation blocks, according to the advertisement, and the museum is of typical timber framed construction on a concrete foundation.
“The milled log walls of the church addition are very rotted, although the perimeter beam, floor, framing, wood floors, and roof assembly are in good condition,” the bid advertisement said. “Most work will take place on the church addition, except that the siding will be replaced on the whole structure.”
The city wants the rehabilitated church to “look as much like the existing church as possible,” the advertisement said.
The project includes replacing the church vestibule and bell tower while salvaging the bell, replacing log walls with timber-framed walls, installing new windows, doors, insulation, electrical and sheetrock, new lighting, and then replacing block footings with new poured-in-place footings. The bids call for new, simulated log siding replacement on both the museum and church.
Civil West has scheduled a mandatory pre-bid conference for Thursday, Sept. 26 at the church and bids are due Oct. 10. Gross thinks the project will draw interest from contractors.
“There’s nothing hard or expensive here,” he said. “It’s just a bit unusual.”