The new Lewis County night-by-night homeless shelter has been ready for more than six months, but the need for some finishing touches has prevented it from being occupied.
Lewis County says the shelter will open its doors for the first time this fall, roughly three years after the county set out to find a replacement for its current emergency shelter.
The Lewis County Board of Commissioners officially approved a contract on Tuesday, Sept. 9, for the construction of sidewalks and other exterior improvements for the county’s new shelter at 2015 NE Kresky Ave. during its weekly business meeting.
While the contract and a cost increase for some changes to the design are just now being signed by the county, the contractor has already gotten to work and, according to Lewis County Commissioner Scott Brummer, “the work is almost done.”
Despite a lack of public updates from Lewis County or the City of Chehalis, work on the shelter broke ground more than a week ago and appears to be almost finished.
In the resolution approved by Brummer and Commissioner Lindsey Pollock — Commissioner Sean Swope was absent from the Tuesday meeting — the county selected the lowest bidder, Taycon LLC, to complete the needed work at the cost of $193,400 before sales tax.
The resolution also included an increase in payment for the selected contractor. According to the resolution, the Rochester-based excavation company found that it would need to change the designs necessary to complete the work. That change incurred an extra cost of just over $15,000.
The needed exterior improvements, often referred to as frontage improvements, will cost the county just over a quarter of a million dollars or, more precisely, $226,788.98, including local sales tax.
A county consultant in charge of the project, Eric Eisenberg, said the county and its contractors expect to complete the improvements and pass inspection by the end of the month. Eisenberg added that while the interior of the building has already passed inspection, the county expects to complete a number of small improvements there as well in the same time period.
Next steps toward getting the site operational include coordination between the county and its shelter operator, The Salvation Army of Lewis County. According to Eisenberg, the nonprofit could sign the lease for the site as early as next week, but the official transition will take longer.
Salvation Army Captain Gin Pack, who helps run the county’s current night-by-night shelter in Centralia, did not say when the organization expected to transition to the new space. She said the organization is excited for the move and thankful to the City of Centralia and its law enforcement for the support it has provided at the current shelter site.
“We’re really excited that this has come to fruition. There seems to have been positive support from the commissioners, and we’re just really grateful to be trusted by those in the community,” Pack said. “We are grateful for the partnership with the City of Centralia and law enforcement and just their patience.”
The new Lewis County night-by-night shelter has been the subject of debate as far back as 2022 when the county originally began the search for a new shelter site. The county originally planned to make the new site a temporary shelter while improving another nearby building at 2025 NE Kresky Ave. for use as the county’s permanent shelter.
The county, however, moved forward with converting the former WSECU building at 2015 NE Kresky Ave. into the county’s permanent shelter after a stakeholder group found the original plan to be “prohibitively expensive.”
Even after committing to the improvements to the new building, the county faced continued obstacles. The county originally had planned to open the new shelter in 2023 and ultimately filed a lawsuit against the City of Chehalis claiming that it was intentionally delaying the process of opening the new shelter. That lawsuit was eventually dropped after assurances from the city that it would cooperate with the effort.
That, however, was not the end of the saga. Most recently, the delay has taken the form of a seeming lack of communication between county officials and their counterparts at the City of Chehalis. The new shelter building was completed and passed inspection at the beginning of the year. At the time, the county was aware of the need for exterior improvements but expected the City of Chehalis to approve operation of the shelter while the work was being done.
However, in a following Chehalis City Council meeting, councilors instead tabled the issue despite one counselor, Kevin Carns, pushing back. At the time, Councilor Kate McDougall led the motion to table the issue for a later date. The issue has not been discussed again. Now, the improvements are nearly done and far ahead of the end-of-the-year deadline the county set for itself in a resolution passed by the Board of Lewis County Commissioners in June.
