Yachats audience voices strong support Thursday night for continued use of Commons as a community center open and available to all

By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews

YACHATS – During the two-year Covid pandemic many people in the Yachats community wrung their hands over what might happen to the shuttered Yachats Commons when activities returned to normal.

The newly refurbished sign outside even pronounces it the “Heart of the community.”

As the past three months indicate, the Yachats Commons is back to its bustling self – small festivals and big music performances, church fundraisers and crab dinners, exercise and arts classes, pickle ball and ping pong, and home to the only pre- and after-school program for children and working families in south Lincoln County.

But the return to normal is also increasing the number of questions of how it should operate, who its customers are, and whether it should cater to events or locals, or both.

More than 150 people gathered in the Commons’ multipurpose room Thursday evening to begin what is expected to be a multi-step process by the city toward determining the facility’s future – and whether simple fixes and some remodeling might keep most users happy. The city also wants to use the discussion to help secure a $100,000 federal grant to develop a master plan for use of all the city’s facilities – and possibly even a larger grant to pay for increasing the city’s resiliency during emergencies.

The Commons building dates back to 1930 when the Lincoln County School District opened a three-room school and it expanded several times through 1968. It closed due to declining enrollment in 1983. The district rented it for events until 1990 when Yachats residents voted to buy the school and 3.5 acres of land for $195,000.

After an introduction Thursday night about the planning process, introduction of consultants and the possibility of a federal energy grant that confused many in the audience, there were clear themes once people were given the task of writing down what they liked about the Commons and what they wanted. These were, generally:

• Keep it focused on community activities and events, and not turn it into a larger, single-use events center;
• Allow and encourage continued use by the Yachats Youth and Family Activities Program;
• Urge the city to hire a regular facilities manager to help at events, let people in and out of the building, and be on call for emergencies. The city’s last two attempts at hiring someone part-time for the job failed;
• Make improvements to the sound and lighting systems, add a bathroom in the northwest corner of the building, and move the council chambers to city hall;
• Connect the Commons and its use to other nearby city facilities and the large green space to the west;
• In conjunction with the new Yachats fire station to the north, equip the Commons to serve as a shelter during large-scale power outages or other emergencies with solar power with battery backup and free internet access;

“This building is for all of us and this room can be transformed into a magical place …” Rose Valentine, the former president of the now defunct Friends of the Yachats Commons nonprofit group told the audience as she summed up her table’s recommendations. “We can work this out.”

The users

Yachats Youth and Families Activities Program has used the Commons for decades to hold its pre- and after-school classes for area children. It just re-started an infant and toddlers play program and has won grants to offer summer activities for children. It is the only such service between Newport and Florence.

During the pandemic, it was able to move its classes from the unsafe basement to remodeled former city offices on the first floor, which it now uses for after-school programs. It uses another room for pre-school classes and a third for the new toddler startup.

Each day it has 15 children in pre-school, another 25 after-school and serves 55 families with a full- and part-time staff of six and a budget of $400,000 a year.

“I don’t see our numbers dropping,” Tracy Crews, the chair of the nonprofit’s board, told YachatsNews.

It is in the second year of a five-year lease for parts of the Commons, paying $1,040 a month in rent. After some debate, the city council approved the lease agreement in 2021 when YYFAP families and supporters inundated the council with the need for such a program for local working families with children.

Crews told YachatsNews that YYFAP had been offered land on which to build its own facility but that the estimated price to construct and maintain it was outside the board’s ability.

“Going to that next level would require an amount of support that we haven’t seen for our programs,” she said.

Crews said the YYFAP board, families and supporters understand the occasional conflict with people or groups staging events. It tries to work around those – everything from stopping use of the commercial kitchen just off the multipurpose room, to using other bathrooms, to coming and going through classroom doors.

Crews, YYFAP executive director Patricia Hettinger and others who spoke in support of the children’s program drew applause and wide support from the audience Thursday night.

Polly Plumb Productions is also a longtime Yachats nonprofit. Its mission is to promote the arts and sciences and stage entertainment events. That ranges from small shows by an affiliated arts guild, to quilt exhibits, to street banner auctions to the wildly popular Celtic music festival that returned last October after a two-year shutdown.

Some – but not all – of its board members say the city should do more to update the Commons in order to help make the current events better and attract even more of them. Those improvements include moving the large kitchen to allow an expansion of the multipurpose room, adding a bathroom to Room 8 which serves as a “Green Room” for performers, and replacing the old, failing or outdated lighting and sound systems.

“It’s a very unique property that lends itself to attracting performers,” said Polly Plump board member Stephen Farish, who is the musical director for the Celtic festival. “But we have always had to patch things together to make it workable. I don’t know of anyone who has produced a show there, or performed in one, who thinks it works particularly well.”

Lambert pleased

City manager Heide Lambert said she was pleased with the turnout, the enthusiasm for the Commons and the community’s passion that it continue as a vibrant local center. The federal energy grant – should the city apply and should it be awarded – would be used to develop a citywide master plan for the Commons, city hall, the Little Log Church Museum and Library, she said.

“How do we want to use this building?” she asked. How do we want to invest in it? And how do we want to use all of our city facilities?”

Lambert has already asked Civil West Engineering of Newport to make a “full assessment” of the building’s condition.

Results of Thursday night’s meeting will be compiled and sifted by the consultants from Forage Design + Planning, then re-worked again for help in putting together the federal grant application by mid-March.

• Quinton Smith is the editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com