Daylight Properties Purchases Three Historic Chehalis Buildings, Opens Office

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Three historical buildings in Chehalis are about to receive a facelift.

Daylight Properties, the property management company that owns St. Helens Inn, has purchased three more historic buildings in Chehalis and opened a local office to manage them.

“Chehalis has a really great historic downtown for its size,” said Robert Hall, who owns St. Helens Inn and founded Daylight Properties. “What’s happened here in Bellingham, what’s happening in Olympia, is going to happen in Chehalis, too, where all the buildings will be saved and have businesses in them. The downtowns are coming back as cultural centers all around. It’s already happening.”

In June, the Bellingham-based Daylight Properties opened a Chehalis satellite office in the St. Helens Inn at 440 N. Market Boulevard. Candice Day, who is a leasing assistant, works out of the office. In addition, Daylight Properties recently hired more people to do maintenance on the Chehalis properties.

Over the past several months, Daylight Properties has purchased three historic buildings in Chehalis — Elgin Arms Hotel, the Brunswig Hotel building and the Elks building on N Market Boulevard.

Hall said Daylight Properties purchased the Elks building in April, the Elgin Arms Hotel in either May or June and the Brunswig Hotel building in July. Hall does not have immediate plans to purchase more property in Chehalis.

“I think I’m good for right now,” he said. “We’re going to get these under control.”

Hall is currently working to restore the Elks building, which is a commercial space located at 463 N. Market Blvd. in downtown Chehalis, just across from St. Helens Inn.

“Back in (the) 60s and 70s, people were embarrassed with older buildings, but now that’s not the case,” Hall said. “To expose the front of the buildings, which were usually made with stone and brick and curved glass ... to let the light in is far more intricate than putting plywood over the building and calling it modern. What I did with the Elks building was expose the front ... I believe it looks much better than before.”

Day said the Elks building has stairs that take people up into what used to be a dance studio. The next level up is a ballroom.

“I’ve seen them do some painting on the outside,” Day said. “They have already done some work to the artwork in the arches on the upper side of the building. I’ve also seen them in the bottom floor space doing some cutting and woodworking in there.”



Hall said he will do the same thing with the Brunswig Hotel building, which is located at 383 N.W. Chehalis Ave. There are 11 apartments in the building and four commercial spaces on the bottom floor. Daylight Properties has already rented out two of the commercial spaces to businesses.

“It’s also been known as the Fink Building, because I believe someone by the name of Fink bought it after Brunswig moved,” Day said. “There are renovations planned. We’ve done inspections on the rooms, so we know what needs to be fixed for the tenants that are living there currently.”

Businessman William Brunswig built the structure, which was constructed in 1895 — three years after the fires of 1892. According to the City of Chehalis’ website, it is the oldest building on Chehalis Avenue. The upper floors were designed to house the Grand Opera House and the building is also referred to as the Opera House building sometimes.

The Elgin Arms Hotel, located at 561 N.W. Rhode Island Place, also has residential capabilities.

“Elgin Arms is an old boarding house,” Day said. “I’m not quite sure when that was built, but there are 10 bedrooms — I believe there are two kitchens. They are fixing it up for residential occupancy. My thought with that is college students would be perfect, because it’s going to be very affordable because of the shared kitchen space and the rooms are a little small. It’s a very interesting building.”

Daylight Properties now owns four historic buildings in Chehalis. The company purchased St. Helens Inn in 2005. Since then, the property management company has poured more than $1 million into renovations, such as restoring the storefront, roof, residential apartments and upgrading the fire alarm system.

St. Helens Inn has been managed by TJ Guyer Property Management since 2006. However, the new Daylight Properties office will take over management in September.

The St. Helen’s Inn has 55 apartments. Hall said that when he purchased the building 13 years ago that it was very run down and poorly managed. Daylight Properties finished the St. Helen’s Inn five years ago.

“I love old buildings,” Hall said. “I spontaneously just purchased (the Elks building), started looking around and found these other two. I wanted to open an office down there and had to have a certain scale to justify that.”