Work is underway on the R.E. Bennett Elementary building in Chehalis to prepare it for the coming school year when it will host around 70 students enrolled with Christ the King Academy.
On Thursday morning, one of the leaders of Christ the Covenant Church and its kindergarten through 12th grade school, Joe Stout, gave The Chronicle a tour of the historic building where workers were already on the move.
Christ the Covenant Church officially purchased the R.E. Bennett Building earlier this month, closing on the sale Wednesday, Aug. 12.
The church plans to entirely relocate to the building from its current facility in northern Centralia, moving both the school as well as the church administration into the building over the coming months.
“With the beginning of our first year, we knew our location out there was going to be we're going to run out of room sooner than later, and so we've had our eyes set on a lot of different things,” Stout said. “R.E. Bennett, it seemed like a dream too good to be true.”
The building needs lots of work, but the dream has come true, and while it may be falling apart in places, Stout and the Christ the King Academy team are confident it will be ready to go for the 2026-2027 school year — and for worship services starting in November.
According to Stout, the middle of the building's three floors will be dedicated to Christ the King Academy, with four classrooms hosting different education levels.
For Stout, like many in the area, the school evokes many memories.
For him, however, it's not just the building but the teaching style that reminds him of his young education in the Evaline School District.
“Christ the King Academy runs a form model, meaning that we offer K through 12th grades, but a lot of those grades are mixed,” said Stout, a church elder and chief musician. “That actually harkens back to my own upbringing at Evaline.”
The alternative education model appears to be a point of pride for Stout. While he is not an educator and said he leaves such things to the teachers and administrators, he is a believer in the form model and what he calls a “classical education.”
“One of the difficult things about the modern education is you have to fit into the cog of your grade level,” Stout said. “You have to learn everything in that grade level, regardless of your ability, regardless of your development.”
Beyond the main floor and Christ the King Academy, the top floor of the building will soon host the church's administration. The building's roughly 850-seat auditorium will become the chapel, hosting the church's first service in the new building in the fall and also serving as the first stop for the students each school day.
Inside the building, contractors are already at work getting the building as ready as possible for the coming school year. The classrooms are the first priority, with plans to keep them largely the same while fixing cosmetic issues and small leaks and hauling in essentials such as new white boards or updated technology.
Starting as an elementary school in 1928, the building was retired from service by the Chehalis School District during the 2018-2019 school year before it was sold in 2021 to the most recent owners under Market Boulevard, LLC.
More recently, the ownership changed to RE Bennett, LLC, a new title, but the same owners under Michael McCowan, according to a Washington Secretary of State database.
The owners bought the building along with the Cascade Elementary building behind it with plans to convert them into “family-oriented apartments.” While that conversion was complete for the Cascade building, the R.E. Bennett building was eventually put back on the market.
According to Stout, he and other leaders of the church and its school had their eyes on R.E. Bennett since as early as 2022, around the early days of Christ the Covenant Academy. The school has operated for four academic years, taking on its first 26 students for the 2022-2023 school year.
“You know, we had probably just started Christ the King Academy as a school, and we were already having board meetings as a school talking about ‘is R.E. Bennett a possibility for down the road?’” Stout said.
In October 2024, the church made its first offer on the building, knowing full well what the owners had planned for it. As Stout tells it, the owner was open to the idea of selling but the parties couldn’t come to an agreement on price. The church moved on, trusting that it wasn’t the right decision at the time.
Stout then recalls he and the church discovering that the building had been put back on the market in the spring of 2025. Christ Covenant Church put an offer on the building later that year, in September.
“The way we believe is the Lord opens and closes doors, and we felt like the door was still open,” Stout said.
In December 2025, the church announced a fundraising campaign to support the purchase of the building, setting a $2.7 million fundraising goal. Roughly six months later, Christ Covenant Church signed an initial sale agreement to purchase the building for $2.32 million, according to the Lewis County Assessor's Office. The church officially closed on the building earlier this month on Wednesday, Aug. 12.
According to Stout, the church has so far raised nearly $2 million in pursuit of purchasing the R.E. Bennett building. He added that they spent $1.7 million in cash on the building while agreeing to take on a development agreement to renovate the nearby Southwest Second Street.
That project is estimated to cost around $630,000, bringing the final sale total to the sum reported to the county.
For previous reporting by The Chronicle about the development agreement with the City of Chehalis, visit https://tinyurl.com/y7r6cn33.
The church is on the hook to complete the road work no later than Sept. 30, 2028, but Stout adds that they are eager to begin spending money on the building itself.
“We got a lot of weatherization work to do in here, for sure,” he said.
He added that the church has a pledge for a major donation in 2027 dedicated to weatherizing the building, which appears to be the main concern moving forward, as some of the top floors show signs of water damage.
According to Stout, the church is also exploring grant funding and registering the building as a national historical site in hopes of accessing additional funding for updating and preserving the building.
Learn more about Christ the King Academy at https://christthekingacademy.org.
