This artist’s rendering of the KNOLL project shows how the land will be contoured and planted with native vegetation. Plans created since this rendering have called for less of a bend in China Creek.
A project more than two years in the making turned another page Monday when construction equipment once again came to life on the Centralia College campus to continue creating an outdoor learning center along and around China Creek.
The KNOLL project — short for Kiser Natural Outdoor Learning Lab, named after late college instructor and naturalist Rufus Kiser — along Washington Street buzzed with surveyors and heavy equipment operators Monday as crews from Schwiesow Construction and Scherer Trucking & Excavation, both based in Centralia, tore up portions of the sidewalk and dug holes for posts to support a bridge abutment over China Creek.
“Our first order of business is to get a lot of this brush cleared and get some metal pipe in here to get things going,” said site superintendent Mike Berg. “It’s good to be back out here again and see the project here moving forward. It’s been awhile since anything really happened and it’s good to be working on it again.”
Centralia College has planned for the KNOLL project for at least the past two years, beginning with buyouts of homes along Washington Avenue and King Street and eventual demolition. Equipment started rolling through the area in December 2009 to begin initial excavation of a roughly 350- by 400-yard area in preparation for the site — but plans with what to do with a stretch of China Creek have been a factor in delaying construction.
A Threefold Benefit
College officials envision the KNOLL project as an area full of various species of trees, plants and flowers — complete with walking paths to open the area between the college’s Science Center and Washington Hall into an area in which nature takes the forefront.
“There’s really going to be nothing like it in Centralia. It’s going to be like our own version of Central Park,” Centralia College President Jim Walton said in early July. “It’s not just a learning center for our students, but it will be a place the public can come and enjoy for a leisurely walk, a picnic, you name it.”
The college also envisions another benefit to the site: Current plans call for resloping the south bank of China Creek, which during heavy rains continually creeps up to nearby homes, alleviating a flooding issue and allowing excess water to pool in a low-lying area of the soon-to-be-reshaped landscape. Plans call for the creek to be slightly rerouted in a southerly direction before maintaining its southwesterly bearing beyond the project site.
Steve Ward, vice president of finance and administration for Centralia College, accompanied Walton on a wading trip through the creek and saw firsthand in early July the erosion that has taken place along concrete walls from years of not just water, but invasive species such as Himalayan blackberries and Scotch broom that have taken hold in the soils holding up the walls.
“You not only have a flooding hazard here, but you could have someone that decides to walk the banks of the creek and it’s hard to see the edge,” Ward said. “There’s also possibilities a lot of that concrete could go at any time. What we’re trying to do is stabilize this in addition to providing a prime learning space for our students.”
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has thus far approved the college’s plans, but the Centralia Planning Department alerted the college to the Federal Emergency Management Administration’s wishing for another study to be done on the effects of what such a change to the flow of China Creek would do.
“They just simply hadn’t been notified of any change yet,” Ward said of FEMA. “We’re hoping they’ll see the benefits to us reshaping the banks, look at the Army Corps signing off on it and give it a blessing too. We’re very optimistic.”
The Next Step
The KNOLL project, part of the college’s 20-year plan, has been largely financed through private donations to the Centralia College Foundation. Exact cost and financial figures weren’t available by press time.
Monday’s work to install the beginning portions of a bridge across China Creek near the intersection of Washington Avenue and Centralia College Boulevard have been approved, according to the college, because plans don’t call for rerouting that specific area of the creek.
The project continues, but much remains to be accomplished: The college recently purchased the Voine Johnson home — the last one standing on Washington Avenue between King Street and Centralia College Boulevard — and plans to demolish it in September, literally paving the way for the installation of walking trails.
“It’s a new beginning, and we’re coming closer each day to seeing an integral part of this college that the entire city of Centralia can be proud of,” Ward said. “It’s something we’ve needed to do for awhile, and just imagine the huge benefit to our students and the community that will come from this project.”
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Christopher Brewer: (360) 807-8235
