An ongoing study suggests Centralia is seriously lacking in commercial retail space, office space and multi-family housing.
On the contrary, Centralia’s Main Street corridor offers more than 20 parcels that are prime for redevelopment.
The Centralia Downtown Association hosted another Revitalization Roundtable event at The Station Lewis County Coffee Co. Monday evening, the second such event this year.
This time, the event was led by Centralia Downtown Association Executive Director MacKenzie McGee with help from the Economic Alliance of Lewis County.
The roundtable focused on downtown Centralia and the nearby Main Street corridor.
“One thing that we found out with some of the data we have for tourism — not everybody's getting downtown,” Economic Alliance Executive Director Todd Chaput said. “You probably have talked to people. They know Centralia, probably the outlets and Country Cousin, as their whole experience of Centralia. There’s so much more to offer.”
The evening included group discussions, surveys and updates on downtown projects, but possibly the most eye-catching developments were preliminary findings from an ongoing Centralia Main Street market study commissioned by the City of Centralia.
Seattle-based BERK Consulting Senior Associate Madalina Calen presented her team's findings so far in three groups: demographic and economic trends; real estate market trends; and Main Street corridor redevelopment.
The study is focused primarily on the Main Street corridor, which in this case is defined as a section of parcels bordering Main Street and Centralia College Boulevard from Pearl Street to Yew Street. Most of the findings are specific to this area, with the exception of real estate trends that analyzed the city as a whole.
The market for all three categories analyzed is very tight, according to Calen, who said “new retail space is being leased almost as quickly as it is being built.”
“The market is absorbing either new inventory that’s coming online or inventory that’s being vacated,” Calen said. “Could be potential good opportunities, such as full service restaurants, sporting goods, furniture stores, and then small-scale specialty retail.”
The study added that rent costs for retail spaces in the city have grown steadily at an average of 2.4% per year from 2017 through 2025.
Office space in Centralia is also very hard to come by, with the city recording just 264,000 square feet in office space. It’s so tight that rent for the spaces is higher on average per square foot than in some comparable cities along Interstate 5, such as Tumwater and Longview. Office space in Centralia goes for an average of $26.32 per square foot compared to $23.89 in Tumwater.
Calen added that the vacancy rate rose suddenly last year from around 0% to 8.5%. That rise apparently was driven entirely by the listing of the former longtime home of The Chronicle along Pearl Street. The building puts into perspective the amount of office space available in the city, with it representing roughly 8.5% of the market. The Chronicle relocated one block away in 2025.
Perhaps less surprising considering the continued push to address a housing shortage state wide, multi-family housing in Centralia has a vacancy rate of just 2.6% and, according to Calen, remains below the “healthy market standard” of between 7% and 8%. Rents in the area are more affordable than competing cities along the Interstate despite rising faster than those same cities in recent years and adding more inventory.
“In terms of the multi-family, Centralia added about 227 multi-family units between 2017 and 2025. That's more than double the inventory of Chehalis,” Calen said.
The findings added that the Main Street corridor, which is currently very reliant on the nearby college for employment, has lots of unused or underused land that could be redeveloped. The study found that the Centralia Main Street corridor boasts 3.2 acres of vacant property across 10 parcels and another 8 acres of property that is available for redevelopment across 26 parcels.
The studies do not yet provide official findings or recommendations, which are expected to be announced later this year, perhaps sometime in August; however, it described unmet housing demand, the potential of the old Campbell Chrysler dealership in downtown and “Centralia College Connectivity” as major opportunities to spur development in the corridor.
Obstacles to development in the corridor include old and aging buildings, high costs for development and flood risks associated with the nearby China Creek.
“Several of the business owners or property owners that we spoke to noted that the corridor currently functions primarily as kind of a pass-through to get to downtown,” Calen said. “So not a destination in itself. It's got an uninviting appearance and lacking curb appeal.”
The goal of the city and the Centralia Downtown Association, however, is to revitalize this corridor in hopes that it will spur economic development and even draw more business to the historic Centralia downtown.
McGee shared some smaller updates to the crowd earlier in the meeting on efforts by the downtown association. In cooperation with Lewis County Transit, there will soon be a pilot program to test out the idea of a public shuttle operating between downtown, the NW Sports Hub and the Centralia Outlets. The shuttle will run every 30 minutes, according to McGee, and is expected to start July 11.
The downtown association has also recently expanded its flower bed program and this year will maintain 164 flower beds around town compared with 139 last year. Finally, the association will also begin its own online event calendar with its new website, which is expected to go online in the middle of next week.
Learn more at https://downtowncentralia.org.
