It’s a good thing Bryan Zemp built his Eagle Scout project to last. The 25-year-old sign announcing the future site of the Snoqualmie Valley Youth Activity Center has been installed again this week on Boalch Avenue in North Bend, across from Encompass. Ty Powers restored the sign last year for his own Eagle project, making it a symbol of what the YAC Board of Directors hopes the center will be.
“We really want to emphasize the multi-generational aspect of the center,” said Board member Jim Green, who is excited to get the YAC “back on the map.”
The center has been closed since March of 2008, when the building it then occupied on Bendigo Boulevard, was flooded with sewage from North Bend’s nearby water treatment plant. Youth groups that relied on the center, mainly Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and the Venturing Crew, have been meeting in other facilities over the years, and focusing more on outdoor activities.
“It kind of disappeared for a few years,” Green said of the center.
Board members were working all along, though, to settle the issue of the old building with the city of North Bend, and to buy new property for a new, bigger center to accommodate the expanding club sizes. In 2010, the city of North Bend bought the property from the YAC for $475,000, and earlier this year, the board purchased a 20-acre site on Boalch Avenue for about $225,000.
The new site will be big enough for larger meeting areas, while still accommodating the outdoor adventures that most of the clubs are involved in.
Those groups are already involved in helping to clear the site of blackberries, said Doug McClelland, also on the YAC Board. Other than that, no plans are final.
“Right now, we just have a piece of property and a real opportunity,” McClelland said.
Green hopes that construction will begin by this spring, and he foresees fund raisers in the future, but said, “We did get enough money from the city (in the property sale) that we can operate without fund raising for now.”
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