Lewis County Rotary Foundation Raises $45K For Discover! Children’s Museum

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The Discover! Children’s Museum just received a $45,000 donation from the Lewis County Rotary Foundation, and is slated to be completed in early 2021. Larry McGee, vice chair for the Discover! Children’s Museum Board of Directors, accepted the check Tuesday afternoon.

The Lewis Rotary Foundation is composed of the Twin Cities Rotary, the Centralia Rotary and the Chehalis Rotary. In 1997, the three rotary clubs formed the Lewis County Rotary Foundation for the purpose of running an annual auction to benefit various community needs. 

Col. Ron Averill, director of the Lewis County Rotary Foundation’s Tri-Club Auction Committee, said the foundation has raised more than $900,000 since then. The most recent tri-club dinner auction took place in May 2018.

“We did very, very well last year,” Averill said. “We had been averaging probably around $30,000 to $35,000 at the auction, sometimes a little lower. But we had a very, very good auction. … Our best auctions have been auctions that have been around children’s needs.”

The Discover! Children’s Museum originally opened in Lewis County as a pilot program in 2013 and was supposed to run for six months.

“It was more successful that we ever would have dreamed,” McGee said. “... We actually broke even and ran for 11 months. The community was amazing — the people that were over helping us paint and helped build exhibits and then the volunteers who helped man the museum. It was terrific.”

The permanent museum will be located near Home Depot in Chehalis. The site work has already started, and McGee said he expects the museum to open as early as late 2020, but more realistically early 2021.



“It’s going to be a combination of a building and a park,” McGee said. “... A small part of the park (will be) for the people who have paid to go into the museum, but the rest of that park will be open for the public.”

McGee said the museum will house two programs from the Lewis County community services organization Reliable Enterprises — a Pre-K from the Lewis County Head Start Program and an Infant-Toddler (In-Tot) Development Center. McGee said Reliable Enterprises will run both programs.

“It’s known that children’s museums and such kind of activities can make a huge difference in a child’s readiness, for something as simple as ‘Johnny you have to wait in line to dig for the dinosaur at the exhibit. Other people are here,’” McGee said. “A lot of kids show up for Kindergarten and they don’t understand waiting for their turn.”

McGee estimated the whole project will cost just over $4 million — between $3.5 and $3.6 million and then an additional $600,000 of in-kind donations. The building alone will cost $3 million and will be funded roughly by $1 million in private funds, $1 million in state funds and $1 million in grants.

“Roughly, we are still on track for that same formula,” McGee said. “... We have $2 million of the $3 million. We have almost $1 million from the local community. We have $1 million from the state legislature, thanks to our Reps. (Richard) DeBolt (R-Chehalis) and (Ed) Orcutt (R-Kalama) and Sen. (John) Braun (R-Centralia). So the last million that we’re working on are from several grant-making organizations that we think will be supportive.”

The $45,000 from the Lewis County Rotary Foundation will go toward that last $1 million the Discover! Children’s Museum Board needs for the building. The site work for the museum, located near the Home Depot in Chehalis, has already started.