Former Jewish Synagogue Restored As ‘King Street Cove’ Event Center

After years of helping other Centralia business owners restore their buildings, Jamie Kaiser finally completed a project he could call his own.

Kaiser has worked on historic buildings all over downtown Centralia — including the Historic Fox Theatre and the Wilson Hotel. For his latest project, he restored a former Jewish synagogue that now serves as an event center.

“When I bought it, it was just completely gutted,” Kaiser said. “It needed everything — electrical, plumbing, everything. It was just down to the studs. So I worked with the city on a permit and pretty much did all the work.”

Kaiser said he has done projects like this one his whole life. For the past year, he spent nights and weekends working on King Street Cove.

“Sometimes I would slip down here during the day,” he said.

The building, located at 200 S. King Street near Centralia College, was an active Jewish synagogue from 1930 until 1994, Kaiser said. 

“From what I understand, it just dwindled down in attendance and there were just 12 or 13 people,” Kaiser said.

Kaiser purchased the building with his wife, Holley, in May 2017 from Dave and Ella Hamilton-Smith.

The Hamilton-Smiths also own the Wilson Hotel. About six years ago, they contacted Kaiser to work on the Wilson Hotel. 

While he was restoring the hotel, the Hamilton-Smiths purchased the synagogue. Although the couple didn’t end up restoring the former synagogue, Kaiser said they knew that that was his intention. Now, King Street Cove is an event center that can house weddings, plays, talent shows, concerts and independent film.

The building has a bride’s changing room, a green room, a stage, a large open area with seating for 150 people upstairs and a kitchen downstairs, with an area that sits 75 people.

Kaiser’s father, Jim Kaiser, is a carpenter and built doors, did trim and helped put the wood ceiling in upstairs. The two completed the building on their own. Kaiser wired the building himself, put the heat pumps in, did the insulation, the drywall, the ceiling and the lighting.

Kaiser said the wood ceiling was one of the most difficult pieces of the entire project.

“Labor-wise it only took probably a week,” he said. “But, working on it nights and weekends, by the time I went to Portland to get it and stain it and seal it, it was a month or month and a half’s worth of work.”

Jim Kaiser said that his favorite part of the building is the entire upstairs, because it just makes him say, “wow.” When asked if he expected the building to turn out as well as it did, Jim Kaiser pointed to the Wilson Hotel and other buildings his son helped restore downtown.

“I had no doubt,” he said. 

In addition to the event venue, Kaiser owns Hub City Supply in downtown Centralia with John Kuhn. he said that he first began working on downtown buildings when his wife, Holley, opened up the frozen yogurt shop “Holley’s Place.”

“Once I started working on that, I worked on the Fox Theatre, and then I went from the Fox Theatre to, I don’t know, every other building in town,” Kaiser said. “I work on literally every building in town.”

Unlike the other projects downtown, though, this one is purely Kaiser’s.

“It was nice to finally do something that was mine,” he said. 

In part, this project stemmed from Kaiser’s love of music and his desire to build a venue that he wanted Centralia to have. Kaiser is a musician who loves production, stage and sound. He plays the piano and guitar, but said he primarily runs sound.

“That’s where I feel like my real talents are in music,” Kaiser said. “So hopefully I get a lot of concerts here to mix.”

The venue, he said, is best suited for jazz.

“I want this to be a jazz venue,” Kaiser said. “Jazz brings the crowd I want. There is a lot of support for jazz, but I’ll take bluegrass. … This building is built for jazz — the architecture, the design, the finishes. The chandeliers say jazz, they don’t say anything else.”