A diagram by the city shows one potential alignment for the United Learning Center at the corner of Maple Street and Pearl Street in Centralia.
A school bus is parked near the future building site of the United Learning Center in Centralia.
The City of Centralia and other partners, including the Early Learning Center, the Boys and Girls Club, the Discover! Children’s Museum and United Way of Lewis County have begun discussions and started moving forward on the United Learning Center (ULC).
The ULC has been described as an “innovative nonprofit center that connects parents and caregivers to an affordable early learning atmosphere for children ages 18 months to 5 years.”
The facility is planned to have a gym with a basketball court, a playground and multi-purpose rooms for various activities.
At their meeting in mid-August, Centralia City Council unanimously approved a motion to invest up to $1.9 million toward the development of the United Learning Center (ULC) after hearing letters of support from over a dozen community members and testimony from State Rep. Richard DeBolt, R-Chehalis.
The project has received $3 million from the state capital budget earmarked for an early learning center, with United Way of Lewis County acting as the fiscal agent.
“We’re starting to work on design right now. We have a meeting to discuss making mockups that we could use for display for public awareness, for fundraising opportunities so that we can expand the existing footprint of the building and make sure it reaches its full potential,” said Todd Chaput, project manager of the United Learning Center.
With the recent failure of the Centralia School District levy, increasing the likelihood that many extracurricular activities will be cut due to the budget deficit, Chaput said that the ULC can help fill that gap and provide meaningful after school activities for children.
“Speaking as a parent of two children in the school district and my wife is a teacher in the school district, it really is going to be essential. Children are going to miss out on a lot of extracurricular activities and organized activities through the school,” said Centralia Mayor Pro-tem Peter Abbarno.
With local school districts beginning the school year off with distance learning due to the risks posed by the spread of COVID-19, working parents are having to find childcare while their kids are at home.
“People over and over again keep saying that the number one issue that they have right now is childcare. The sooner we raise money and get this thing off the ground the better. I think it’s going to be a game-changer for working families,” said Abbarno.
“I would really like to start construction before the end of the year. We have to go through the design phase and then the bidding process so it’s going to be a challenge but I’m hoping by the end of the year,” said Chaput.
Centralia City Manager Rob Hill gave the city’s perspective on the multi-partner aspect of the project and what the next steps are going to be.
“We don’t do projects like this very often where we have community partners… When you do a project like this with multiple parties coming together, pooling resources toward a common project, it’s kind of a strange dynamic,” said Hill.
Hill said that a recent project the city worked on that was similar to the United Learning Center was the Lewis County Events Center and Sports Complex at Fort Borst Park — which was worked on by the city, the Public Facilities District and the Centralia School District.
Hill said that the city is going to try to follow the same process for the ULC that they did while working on the sports complex.
“The next step that we see is what’s called an umbrella agreement,” said Hill. “That typically rolls over into the interlocal agreement and that’s when you really start getting into the details. It’s going to take a couple of months at least to get through those. A lot of work has to be done before we start spending money and sticking shovels in the ground.”
An umbrella agreement is used to define the purpose of the agreement between the joint parties to describe the rules, rights and responsibilities of the parties.
“(The umbrella agreement) is going to be the next thing that comes back to the city council. At the council meeting last week, what was decided there was a just a very conceptual idea of this project and whether or not this idea really interested the city council,” said Hill.
Hill said that as the organizations get into drafting up the documents for the United Learning Center, there’s more opportunity for the city council and the community to discuss the details of the project.
