North Bend offers to buy Youth Activity Center
November 19, 2009
By Tara Ballenger
For more than 50 years, Boy Scouts like Josh Yoker have been meeting at the Youth Activity Center on Bendigo Boulevard in North Bend. Yoker, an Eagle Scout in Troop 446, said the building was a place for the scouts to call their own and felt like home.
Last week, however, the center’s nonprofit owner accepted an offer from North Bend to buy the property, which lies in the path of a future sewage line expansion.The city has had its eye on the property for awhile, in anticipation of the end of a 10-year water moratorium, but when an unexpected sewage backup in March 2008 rendered the building unusable without thousands of dollars of repairs, it offered an opportunity to expedite the process, City Administrator Duncan Wilson said.
For Yoker, it will be missed.
“It was a great little space,” he said. “It was a building that was ours.”
Troop leader Doug McClelland said he is happy to have the negotiations settled.
“It’s taken a long time, but the city’s worked hard and now we can move forward trying to find a location and construct a new (center) that will serve the youth of the Valley for another 50 years,” he said.
The city will pay the owner, the Snoqualmie Valley Youth Activity and Community Center Association, an initial payment of $225,000 for the property, plus $14,500 for clean-up costs, said Michael Brandt, the group’s attorney and an assistant troop leader for Troop 446.
After an appraised value is set for the building, the city will pay the group the balance, he said, adding that he expects the appraisal to be more than $225,000.
“We’ve come a long way. They initially wanted to give us $30,000 and be done with us, and we’re obviously a lot further beyond that now,” Brandt said.
Brandt said the group accepted the offer because it was the best option for the YAC, which might have been subject to condemnation because of the sewer extension anyway.
“This puts the money in our pocket earlier so we can find a replacement sooner,” he said. “We’ve been out of the YAC for over a year and half, and we’d like to get started on having a place where we aren’t bouncing around to different facilities that don’t necessarily meet the scouts’ needs.”
Since the sewage backup—which the city took full responsibility for—the scouts have held their Monday meetings in coffee shops, schools and the North Bend Railroad Depot.
Dale Grandlick, the president of the YAC’s board of directors, said that it may be as long as two years before the scouts have another place to call home.
“It will be at least a year, unless a miracle drops out of the sky and we were to find a property that already meets the needs of the constituents we already have,” Grandlick said.
He wants to find a building situated near the outdoors, like the old YAC, he said.
“The ability to hold a meeting inside of a building and then be able to go out and practice the skills you just learned was great,” Brandt said. “We hope that as we move forward with whatever we happen to settle on with the city, we’ll identify a location that will be even better suited for those activities.”
Grandlick said he doesn’t know yet if a new YAC will be constructed from the ground up or modified from an existing building.
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