By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNew.com
YACHATS — After years with its deteriorating exterior exposed to the wind and rain, the Little Log Church and Museum is buttoned up for the winter – and maybe longer.
Now, over the next few months, it could be time for a city commission and the City Council to figure out what to do next.
A contractor from Eugene has finished covering most of the church structure on West Third Street with plywood and tar paper and propped up two walls to prevent them from twisting or leaning. The council approved up to $12,000 for the work in order to protect the building from deteriorating further and give it time to determine what to do.
“It’s totally buttoned up,” said Larry Thornton, a Yachats mechanical engineer who has taken on the project and found a commercial contractor to winterize – and maybe rebuild – the church.
The church portion of the structure has been deteriorating for years, but has accelerated in its decline. Many of the logs in the walls are rotten and allowing water to penetrate inside, there is dry rot in the walls, its wood foundation is crumbling, and some windows are failing.
As far back as 2019 the city had budgeted money to repair or replace the church. But the effort stalled when the Parks & Commons Commission asked that Friends of the Little Log Church & Museum to raise $100,000 of what is expected to be a $400,000 project. The nonprofit group has raised $30,000 of that.
Thornton told YachatsNews that the city needs to make a decision in January on whether to proceed in 2022 if it wants to get on the summer schedule of McClain Construction, a commercial contractor from Eugene who has examined the building and did the winterization in late November.
“All of the general contractors are swamped,” Thornton said.
Getting a letter of commitment from the city, which the contractor needs, early next year may be a stretch.
When the council approved money for the winterization in August, councilors said what needed to follow is a “larger, community discussion” on whether residents want to spend the money to save it. But there has been no further discussion of when or how to do that.
Most large city projects in Yachats have been stalled for the year since the departure of former city manager Shannon Beaucaire, two interim managers who followed her, the lack of a facilities manager, and the council’s focus on its homemade search for a new city manager, which may be nearing an end.
Friends of the Little Log Church & Museum plan to attend the Dec. 7 meeting of the Parks & Commons Commission to update it on the winterization and ask how to proceed.
“We need to get a sense of where this is on peoples’ priority list,” said board member James Kerti, who also holds the city’s contract for tourism promotion. “This is a project that should be on a strict timeline — if it’s to get done next year.”
Commission chair George Mazeika said the Little Log church discussion will be on the group’s December agenda.
“There will be a discussion of the LLCM at the December meeting,” Mazeika said in an email to YachatsNews. “It seems newcomers are not getting familiar with our community’s past and I want to get a wider discussion of the issue.”
Kerti is unsure how the commission or council intends to get community input. There could be a general community meeting, he said, or a survey much like the one the commission did to gauge sentiment and ideas for redeveloping the grass field behind City Hall.
But a decision in January may be a stretch.
“We may have to let this process play out in 2022 and hope the building is still stable when some sort of a decision is eventually made,” Kerti said.