By GARRET JAROS/YachatsNews
YACHATS – While efforts to complete repairs needed to shore up the Yachats’ Commons – which serves as the town’s community center – have been humming right along, a new snafu is creating what will undoubtably mean more work to do.
It turns out the Commons and its associated Pavilion have unintentionally gone afoul of fire and building codes resulting in the Pavilion being shut down and the Commons in need of kitchen upgrades — if it continues to operate as it has in the past.
The revelations came just days before the Agate Festival in January when deputy state fire marshal Shannon Miller and Yachats Rural Fire Protection District chief Frankie Petrick inspected both buildings. The results caught city manager Bobbi Price by surprise.
“There have been inspections at the Commons before,” Price said. “Every single year OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) has been there and the fire department’s been there. There are inspections annually and everything has been fine – seemingly.”
The inspection was for “a consultation of special events at the community center,” according to the fire marshal’s report, which the Commons passed with just a few minor notes.
Also made clear to city officials were the need for updated exit signs and that hallways could not be used by vendors with tables because they obstruct pedestrian flow.
“There were rules to use smaller tables in the hallways in the past so flow can still happen,” Price said. “And any time we were told something like that we would make sure the event producer would follow through with that.”
Since the inspection, Price has been in regular communication with fire officials to figure out where there might be some wiggle room, noting that “there are a lot of events that really truly rely on every square foot of space.”
The Yachats Commons serves as an events center, a place for exercise classes, pickleball, ping pong, yoga, plays, banquets and dozens of other activities throughout the year. It is home to the Yachats Youth and Family Activities Program – the only preschool in south Lincoln County — and provides an office for the Yachats Chamber of Commerce as well as other meeting rooms.
It will also serve as the temporary (and much smaller) home of the Yachats library during the razing and reconstruction of the building on West Seventh Street.
So far this fiscal year, the Commons has generated $18,000 in income from events, classes and room rentals. There was also a donation of $5,000. The city contributed $100,000 to its operation – $70,000 from its general fund and $30,000 from visitor amenities funds generated by lodging taxes.
Kitchen issues
Also not mentioned in the report is the Commons’ kitchen, which is a different issue altogether that when boiled down clarifies that because of the room’s size, no more than five people can occupy it at any one time.
“We have been trying to get to the bottom of the kitchen,” Price said. “That really, really affects the usage for events like the Celtic Festival, which has been using it for how many years – 11 or 12 — to be able to set up. So, we are trying to figure out why is that.”
Price points to a separate room only a foot bigger than the kitchen that allows for an occupancy of 49 people. She also notes the Celtic and Mushroom festivals do not cook in the kitchen but use food warmers to serve food that is brought in from local restaurants.
“And there’s beer and wine and whiskey tasting with tables set up for that,” Price said. “So it’s been a multi-use dining and food service zone for events. So we are trying to figure out why is it five people only all of a sudden? Or maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to have been? I have called and asked (fire officials) a million questions.”
What she hears back is that she needs to talk to Lincoln County building official John Rodriguez. He will visit on Monday to do a walk-through of the Commons and Pavilion. She has emphasized to him the importance of expediting whatever needs to be done so that future events are not derailed.
“We have a longtime event in Yachats that hopes to clarify the kitchen usage in the commons,” she wrote to Rodriguez in March. “They need to start ticket sales and book their talent. A large part of their event is serving food in the kitchen space. This kitchen is part of the assembly A-3 for recreational events, and we would like to allow this space to continue being used as it has in the past.”
The kitchen had also been used as a snack time gathering place for students in the Yachats Youth and Families Activities Program, a longtime Commons tenant.
The city’s capital improvement program calls for a master plan this year that will outline city building uses and designs, Price said.
“Within that, we want to say how do we do this kitchen to make it usable for all our events?” Price said. “How do we do the space so it’s usable for the school? We are having the starts of those conversations but it’s going to be a long road and we have a lot coming up, so while we are working on this how can we keep our community and our non-profits and are events all rolling in the meantime?”
Pavilion closed
The Pavilion is a separate issue. It failed inspection.
It was originally built with donations from the Yachats Lion’s Club and permitted in July 2000 as a picnic shelter – comprised of a concrete slab and wood. In 2010 volunteers added tempered glass and doors to help button it up against wind and rain. But they did not get a building permit.
“We can’t use the Pavilion because the doors are not up to fire code and the permitted use of the building is not matching what we are using it for,” Price said. “Adding the doors and glass changed the building structure and usage — so the occupancy, fire code and safety, exit lights and stuff like that.”
Price said Rodriguez was “very cordial and very nice” when she spoke to him April 5 and that she hopes with his help a solution can be found sooner rather than later.
“We already have an architect and engineer lined up to do what we need to do on the Pavilion to make it a usable space, whether that means changing the doors to meet code and getting with the engineer to get the proper permits,” Price said. “And we do hope to have that in place by this summer. Our contract with them is they will get it all the way through permits.”
What led to inspection?
The sudden inspection by fire officials can be chalked up to happenstance.
While YYFAP does have strict requirements for annual inspections by OSHA and the state fire marshal’s office, there are no such requirements for the Commons, said Petrick, who just happened to rent the Pavilion for her granddaughter’s birthday party during the week leading up to the Agate Festival. It was then she realized the Commons was overdue for inspection.
“I said ‘Wait a minute, we’ve got to know how many people we can put in here,’” Petrick said. “And then we found out that the whole building was improperly classified because nobody thought about getting a building permit for that structure. Nobody intended for anything to not be smooth, but there were a lot of things that had just kind of been piled up.”
Petrick contacted Miller and arranged for an inspection.
“It was time,” Petrick said. “The building is getting a lot of use and we need to make sure that we’re doing everything right. It’s a life safety thing.”
A lot has contributed to the slow erosion of oversight through the years, Petrick said. Everything from placards and signs being removed from the Commons’ walls and then lost when it was painted; turnover and staff shortages at the city and in the county’s building department; or a kitchen that was built piecemeal by Friends of the Commons with the idea it would be used during emergencies and not for major events with hundreds of people.
“The kitchen has the ability, if the city wants to do it, to make it into two rooms,” Petrick said. “The kitchen could be a kitchen. It has to have an outside door and meet all the codes.”
Another issue is the “liability of looking the other way,” said Petrick, who remembers a 2016 motel fire in Newport that killed four people because upgrades were not made when it transformed from a nightly to a weekly and monthly motel.
“And all those years that things were happening at the Commons, some firefighter was always there,” she said. “We always supported activities there, and it was always a volunteer (which are in short supply now) to remind them ‘Hey, you can’t block the exits’ – just simple stuff.
“So it just gradually got to a point of ‘Wait a minute, we need to figure out what we can legally do in this building’ because I would have a responsibility as well as the city.”
Petrick added that she believes Price is the perfect person to get it all figured out.
“She’s just got a really good personality and the ability to talk to folks without getting them upset,” the fire chief said. “And she’s a really hard worker.”
- Garret Jaros is YachatsNews’ full-time reporter and can be reached at GJaros@YachatsNews.com
