The Lewis County Board of Commissioners approved a resolution Tuesday, June 24, that surpluses a building once intended to be the county’s new night-by-night homeless shelter.
The building at 2025 NE Kresky Ave. was set to be the final spot for a Lewis County shelter to serve residents experiencing homelessness as recently as 2022 before the project was found to be too expensive to undertake. That led to the county moving forward with converting the nearby 2015 NE Kresky Ave. building into the permanent night-by-night shelter, which has faced its own challenges. As a result, the building has sat vacant since the Lewis County Community Development Department moved out of the building in 2022.
The surplus of 2025 NE Kresky Ave. means that the building has been deemed unnecessary or not useful for the county or any of its goals and opens up the door for county officials to list the building for sale.
“From time to time, Lewis County has real property that is no longer needed to support the county's operations,” reads the resolution. “The real property located at 2025 NE Kresky Ave., Chehalis … has been recommended as surplus to the county's needs now and in the foreseeable future by the capital facilities manager and the County Manager.”
The building was once used by Lewis County to house some of its operations, including the Public Works, Public Health and Social Services and Community Development departments. However, the county began vacating the building in 2022 when other spaces in Chehalis became available.
After that, the county considered using 2025 NE Kresky Ave. as a permanent night-by-night shelter. In a short lived agreement, the former WSECU building at 2015 NE Kresky Ave. would have operated as a shelter in the interim while the county made improvements to the neighboring building. Once the improvements were made, 2025 NE Kresky would have become the night-by-night shelter and the WSECU building would have become the new home of the Lewis County Animal Shelter.
In keeping with the plan, the small bank building was initially purchased using animal shelter funds. However, according to a consultant with Lewis County, Eric Eisenberg, who has been in charge of the night-by-night shelter effort, deeper analysis from both a county stakeholder group and the Lewis County Animal Shelter found the improvements necessary to convert each building into the desired night-by-night shelter and animal shelter facilities would be “prohibitively expensive.”
After coming to this conclusion, the county purchased the smaller bank building from the Lewis County Animal Shelter to shore up the animal shelter budget and began moving forward with the current iteration of the plan: operating a permanent night-by-night shelter out of the former WSECU bank building.
That plan has had its own challenges. Occupancy has not begun despite finishing work on the building earlier this year. Most of the delays have stemmed from disagreements between the City of Chehalis and Lewis County, which even led to a lawsuit being filed by the county in 2024. The suit has since been dismissed as the two jurisdictions work toward completion of the project.
Now close to the finish line, the county still needs to finish exterior infrastructure improvements, including the installation of sidewalks and sewer drains, or come to an agreement with the City of Chehalis to allow operations to begin while the work is being completed.
The city has been skeptical and most recently tabled the agreement, which Lewis County has already signed, saying they would consider signing it after the county has selected a contractor for the necessary improvements.
