The Lewis County Board of Commissioners approved a resolution Tuesday that will approve the lease of the county’s new night-by-night shelter to the Salvation Army of Lewis County.
According to Eric Eisenberg, the county contractor in charge of the project, the approval of the lease and completion of the construction outside the night-by-night shelter building are the last steps needed by Lewis County to get the shelter open and operating. The lease will begin on Oct. 1 and last for one year.
Eisenberg added that the resolution approving the lease also dictates that the rent paid by the shelter operator, The Salvation Army, goes into a capital operating reserves fund to support the operation and maintenance of the shelter in the future.
As the county wraps up the last steps it needed to get the shelter running, Eisenberg said the Salvation Army will be able to start moving into the new facility but won’t be able to begin operating until receiving final occupancy approval from the City of Chehalis.
“They will be able to start moving over, but they will not be able to occupy and start operating the shelter there until we receive our final occupancy from the City of Chehalis, which is likely to be quite soon as they finish the frontage this week,” Eisenberg said.
If approved, the shelter could begin operating as soon as next month and put an end to a years-long effort to create an updated night-by-night shelter in Lewis County.
“Night-by-night” means that those who stay overnight at the facility will need to leave with their belongings each day and won’t stay there permanently.
Lewis County first purchased the new shelter building at 2015 NE Kresky Ave., which was originally a Washington State Employees Credit Union (WSECU) building, in 2022. At the time, the building was meant to be turned into a temporary night-by-night shelter before eventually becoming the new site of the Lewis County Animal Shelter.
The plan was short lived as the county and others quickly found the changes to be "prohibitively" expensive. The building instead became the long-term solution to creating an updated night-by-night shelter in the county.
The shelter project continued to face delays over the following years, eventually leading to a lawsuit between Lewis County and the City of Chehalis. More recently, the City of Chehalis tabled an agreement that would have allowed the shelter to begin operating earlier this year, pushing the county to complete necessary improvements to the exterior, including new sidewalks and stormdrains — often called frontage improvements.
