'Point of pride': United Learning Center celebrates long-awaited grand opening

May 13-Nearly five years after first breaking ground, the United Learning Center (ULC) will celebrate its official opening in Centralia with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Thursday.

The event begins at 11:30 a.m.

The ULC is a collaboration between United Way of Lewis County, the Discover! Children's Museum, the Boys and Girls Club of Lewis County, and Bezos Academy, a tuition-free Montessori-style preschool.

The City of Centralia owns the 17,900-square-foot building located on the corner of Maple Street and North Pearl Street.

United Way of Lewis County and the Discover! Children's Museum operate as the main tenants. United Way subleases its portion to Bezos Academy and the Boys and Girls Club.

Cascade Community Healthcare, an early partner in the project, may occupy space at the center in the future.

Discover! opened its doors on April 25.

A decade (or more) in the making

The ribbon cutting comes after almost a decade of planning, advocating, funding, construction and delays.

Depending on who you ask, the project - at least as an idea - began much earlier.

Larry McGee, board president of Discover!, said the idea for a children's museum in Lewis County began about 16 years ago.

"And we came out of a community effort that had looked at making improvements so the community would be a better place to live, and, frankly, would be more attractive to pull people in, you know, new businesses," McGee said. "And so this came out of a citizen's initiative."

That initiative started shortly after Kelly Vanesse planned a field trip to the Hands On Children's Museum in Olympia, according to reporting by Chronicle columnist and local historian and author Julie McDonald.

In 2009, Vanesse and Renell Norquist brought the idea of creating a museum in Lewis County to local community leaders, which included McGee, former chair of the Chehalis Community Renaissance Team, now known as Experience Chehalis.

In 2013, Discover! launched a successful pilot program that ran for 11 months - and extended its target duration by five months.

McGee said the museum received $40,000 eight years ago from the Rotary Club to begin outreach to thousands of children.

Peak Credit Union - formerly TwinStar Credit Union - also contributed $50,000 around six or seven years ago, according to McGee.

Shelby Campbell, executive director of the museum, said they've held 145 classroom presentations to date.

In 2018, United Way of Lewis County, in discussing the current needs of the community, highlighted the lack of affordable childcare as a primary point of emphasis.

Debbie Campbell, current interim executive director of United Way of Lewis County, was executive director of the nonprofit organization at the time.

Campbell remembers talking about what they were going to do about the county's families who were asset-limited, income constrained and employed - known as ALICE.

Angie Brown, president of the board of directors, said Todd Chaput, former board president and the ULC's project manager, had been frustrated with the lack of adequate childcare in the area.

"Well, then (state Rep.) Richard DeBolt came a year later at our board retreat and said, 'I secured you $3 million (through the Department of Commerce)," Brown said.

So Chaput started looking for buildings, which included the old Logan School, a property ultimately deemed unfeasible due to asbestos, among other issues.

"Around this time, Larry (McGee) was looking for his permanent home, too, and then the city offered us that property, and ... it all just kind of came together," Brown said.

McGee said museum organizers had previously looked at over 30 sites for their home. The cost of bringing old buildings up to necessary standards proved to be prohibitive, however.

"We were running parallel," Chaput said of the then-separate ventures.

That is, until state Sen. John Braun and DeBolt encouraged the groups to join.

McGee called the eventual partnership a "point of pride."

"We don't live in a huge metropolitan area, and we're doing something that's really showing great leadership," McGee said.

The goal, Brown said, was to create a "one-stop shop" for families to improve early learning and afterschool options in the area.

"Discover! Children's Museum was something that was such a huge thing in Lewis County when they did the pilot program, and all of us wanted to see that succeed," Brown said.

Annie Oien, former executive director of United Way of Lewis County, would later describe the joint venture as a "campus of compassion."

"This notion of tying these things together is not brand new," McGee said. "The notion of putting them together to save money and get something done, really came strongly from the legislature. But the idea of marrying things has been around for some time. We just didn't know how to do it."

In 2020, United Way of Lewis County, Discover! Children's Museum and the Boys and Girls Club of Lewis County entered an agreement with the City of Centralia that outlined financing, construction and operations.

The Centralia City Council also approved a motion to invest up to $1.9 million toward the ULC.

TransAlta Centralia Coal Transition Board added $1 million to the project, which operated as the ULC's cashflow, according to Chaput.

Enter Bezos Academy

In 2021, Bezos Academy, a collection of tuition-free preschools specializing in Montessori-style education, agreed to cover 10 years of operating costs as the ULC's provider of early education.

The academy had opened its first school in Des Moines, Washington, only a year earlier.

As of this fall, the Seattle-based academy will have 38 schools across six states, according to Allison Leader, head of communications at Bezos Academy.

"All the groups were so mission-aligned from the beginning," Leader said of the ULC partners. "It was so clear that we were wanting to provide the same types of support to the same types of families in the same community. And, you know, it's amazing how far everything's come."

In order to qualify for the preschool, which will open to 80 students ages 3 to 5 in September, families must live in Lewis County and earn up to 400% of the Federal Poverty Level.

"So these are families that probably, many of them, would not qualify for a Head Start (program), but can't even come close to affording to pay for, you know, a private Montessori or preschool program. And so that's really where we're focused," Leader said.

A family of three, for example, can make up to $109,280 and still be eligible. A family of four, meanwhile, can make up to $132,000 a year.

The school, led by Dalia Guevara, will include 17 full-time employees. Its students are chosen based on a lottery system and rolling application process.

"We're based in Montessori practices and principles, and we're really focused on providing access to children of families who otherwise would not have the opportunity to participate in a program like this," Leader said.

"But it has to come with quality," she added.

Jerrod Gonzales, who oversees operations at Bezos Academy in Washington, said the hope is that the school becomes part of the "local ecosystem."

"Montessori, if you've studied it, is very expensive," McGee said. "It's very rigorous. It's like a really high quality approach for pre-school."

The four-classroom preschool will run five days a week, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Late funding push

Despite the collective momentum, and multiple funding sources, progress with the ULC's construction slowed following its 2021 groundbreaking, in part due to rising costs in both labor and building materials, issues exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In May 2024, the project received a lifeline when the state Legislature allocated $1.9 million to the Boys and Girls Club of Lewis County for early learning at the ULC.

Sarah Althauser, executive director of Boys & Girls Club of Lewis County, and a former Centralia city councilor, organized a meeting with state Rep. Peter Abbarno to kickstart the process.

"So Peter and I spent the weekend cranking out an application for funding," Chaput said.

The funding was crucial, Althauser said.

"Phase One was falling short with funding, and so we reworked it," Althauser said, adding that the club ultimately took over the space originally intended for Cascade Community Healthcare.

At the time, the partners still weren't sure if they were going to get federal grant funding.

"We had a board retreat a year ago, and it was very emotional, and we had to make a commitment that we were gonna do whatever we had to do, whether it be loans or whatever had to happen to finish the building or not," Brown said.

"Every year we waited was another million (dollars)," Chaput added.

The federal HUD grant was ultimately approved for $4 million in 2025. ULC partners credited U.S. Sen. Patty Murray as being instrumental in securing the funding.

Centralia City Manager Michael Thomas called Oien the "force of nature" behind the project, and thanked Deputy City Manager Amy Buckler for being everyone's point of contact.

Thomas also credited Kelly Smith Johnston, former Centralia mayor and current deputy mayor, for being a longtime vocal advocate of the ULC.

The city manager spoke to the misconception that the city gave an additional $1.5 million to help complete the project in 2025.

"We had already contractually obligated $1.5 million to the project," Thomas said.

To allocate the funding, the city pulled from its general fund, instead of using its less-flexible real estate excise tax (REET) funds.

"So our council saw the need, stepped up, transferred the money out of the other bucket to cover that $1.5 million," Thomas said.

Chaput thanked Andrew Christensen of Construct, Inc. for staying with the project despite construction being put on hold for eight months, as well as the building's lead architect, Emily Moneymaker, of KMB Architects.

Moneymaker is an alumnus of W.F. West High School.

Ribbon cutting and early programming

The ULC's long-awaited ribbon-cutting ceremony will include Centralia School District Superintendent Dr. Lisa Grant, Dr. Dana Anderson, CEO of Washington School Information Processing Cooperative and former superintendent of Capital Region ESD 113, and Katie Ford of Bezos Academy.

Debbie Campbell said the event is sponsored by Gesa Credit Union, Olympia Federal Savings and Pacific Mobile Structures.

While the Discover! Children's Museum has already opened its doors, the Boys and Girls Club will soon begin its "Summer Art Series" at the ULC in June.

The seven-week program will run three days a week.

Bezos Academy, which is currently hiring positions, will begin school in September.

To learn more about the ULC and its partners, visit https://www.lewiscountyuw.com/united-learning-center.

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