Lewis County’s new permanent night-by-night homeless shelter is just about ready to open.
Final inspection of the interior of the renovated former Washington State Employees Credit Union (WSECU) Bank building in Chehalis has been accepted, “and there is no more that we’re being expected to do within this,” Lewis County Director of Facilities Alex Murray said Monday as he and fellow project staff gave a tour of the ne shelter to the Board of Lewis County Commissioners and other local stakeholders.
The shelter will have the same 70-bed capacity that the current temporary night-by-night shelter at the Salvation Army’s location in Centralia has.
“It’s just that here, 70 beds will be a lot more … doable,” said Eric Eisenberg, a former housing and infrastructure specialist for Lewis County who stayed on as a project consultant after he left his position with the county.
“Night-by-night” means those who use the shelter will have to depart each morning and won’t be allowed to keep belongings at the site when they are not there.
Renovations to the WSECU bank building to turn it into a habitable shelter included moving the main entrance to the side of the building to create a “staging area” before people move into the shelter, tearing down walls to create an open floor plan with clear sight lines, installing laundry and shower facilities, and more.
The shelter will include separate men’s and women’s sleeping areas, two private “family rooms” for parents with children, a sitting area with tables and chairs, lockable storage for patrons’ belongings, offices for staff, a kitchenette, a laundry room, multiple bathrooms, a single shower and a fenced outdoor area.
“This is a project that has evolved and changed and kind of grown as we’ve worked on it … but I think a couple things that I’m really happy about is the amount of work that went into really thinking this through,” said Murray, referring to a series of meetings project managers had with local stakeholders, including the City of Chehalis, the Salvation Army, homeless service providers and citizens.
“All of that stuff has gone into the design, sometimes in ways that are sort of invisible, and sometimes in ways that got filtered through grant requirements and city permitting requirement realities, but it’s all been a part of the same conversation,” Eisenberg said. “We hope that the facility will do what the public and all other stakeholders wanted it to do, which is provide an emergency location for people who are experiencing homelessness that is designed to make sure it’s safe and warm and has adequate space, and also provide an incentive for them to try and pick themselves up and get back on their feet and find housing, as opposed to being warehoused in a single location.”
After years of delays, the only hurdle project staff have to clear before the shelter can open is finishing city-required frontage improvements on the property, such as sewers and sidewalks.
“We have talked to the city and they have represented to us that we could do a developer’s agreement, an agreement between the county and the … Chehalis City Council, that would allow us to occupy before the frontage was installed,” Eisenberg said.
Work on developing that agreement is underway, Eisenberg said.
The Salvation Army is ready to move in and start operating out of the new shelter as soon as the City of Chehalis gives word that they can occupy it, according to Eisenberg.
While an official opening date has yet to be determined, the news that the end of the project is in sight was welcome to local stakeholders who have waited years for the permanent shelter to open.
“I think that people have been, justifiably, sort of impatient for ‘when are we going to get this place open already?’” Eisenberg said.
Eisenberg led the effort to develop the county’s 12-step housing initiative, which is meant to address a crisis revealed by his study to be fueled by a 69% drop in the number of homes for sale in Lewis County between 2012 and 2021.
Establishment of a permanent night-by-night shelter was one of the action items included in the housing initiative, which the Board of Lewis County Commissioners adopted via resolution in February 2022.
Lewis County purchased the old WSECU building later that year and began working with the City of Chehalis to turn it into a year-round indoor emergency shelter, according to previous Chronicle reporting.
Lewis County went out for bids on a contract to manage the night-by-night shelter in February 2023, awarding a joint contract to the Salvation Army and HopeSource that April.
At the time, the county’s plan was to open an interim shelter at the former WSECU building at 2015 NE Kresky Ave. in Chehalis as a permanent shelter down the street at 2025 NE Kresky Ave. was completed.
However, the county determined the use of 2025 NE Kresky Ave. as a final shelter location to be “prohibitively expensive,” and decided to make the WSECU building the site of the permanent shelter, according to previous Chronicle reporting.
The county has described the location as easily accessible to emergency services while being located on already-established public transportation routes.
The interim shelter was expected to open at the old WSECU building by the end of 2023, but with the building not usable as a shelter by April 2024, Lewis County ended up suing the City of Chehalis in Thurston County Superior Court, alleging that the City of Chehalis “intentionally interfered with said opening for an improper purpose, delay and by improper means,” according to previous Chronicle reporting.
According to the suit, Lewis County initially filed a request to change the use of the property from a commercial building to a year-round indoor emergency shelter on May 5, 2022. While Chehalis acknowledged the application, the city took “no other action” until June 2023, according to the lawsuit.
The county dropped the lawsuit in June 2024 after the City of Chehalis committed to additional cooperation in permitting the project, according to previous Chronicle reporting.
Since then, work on renovating the WSECU bank building into a permanent night-by-night shelter has progressed steadily.
The current renovation project total is $103,629, which is well under the $160,000 county estimate for the renovations contract, according to previous Chronicle reporting.
The Board of Lewis County Commissioners voted Tuesday to extend an existing temporary interfund loan from the Real Estate Excise Tax for $500,000, which technically expired Dec. 31, 2024.
The extension of the loan allows the county to access the funds through Dec. 31, 2025, for the shelter project but does not affect the loan amount.
