Jacob Dimond / jake@yelmonline.com
The City of Yelm is weighing its options as it anticipates the potential construction of the “Yelm Civic Center” — a project formally known as the Yelm Education and Innovation Center (EIC).
Cody Colt, Yelm Public Works Director, provided an update to Yelm City Councilors on the potential civics center during a Yelm City Council study session on Tuesday, March 3. The building, if constructed, would be amongst the tallest buildings in Yelm.
“It’s had different iterations. Education Innovation Center, City Hall 2.0, but a civic center is what we’re going with now,” Colt said.
According to Colt, the potential “Yelm Civic Center” would be located near the public safety building where the building of the Yelm Historical Museum currently sits on McKenzie Avenue and Third Street. He added that the museum would either be sold or torn down if the City of Yelm decided to go forward with a civic center — however, a historical museum would be incorporated into the new building.
He added the idea behind constructing the “Yelm Civic Center” would be to create a place to allow people to use and work at, but create a space for the City of Yelm to provide council chambers and create a new city hall. This building, according to Colt, would house the city’s growth for the next 20 years.
The proposed “Yelm Civic Center” is also 39,000 square feet in total.
“The idea behind this is you build something that you don’t have to rebuild or buy again,” Colt said. “This will last for 20 years, and with the third floor, we can change that out as the city grows. This could last 40 years versus when we bought the city hall and we’ve already started to outgrow it five or six years ago.”
According to Mayor Joe DePinto, the City of Yelm has grown since Yelm moved into its current city hall building. He noted Yelm’s full time employees have grown from 50 to 75 in that specific time period.
“We’ve grown quite a bit after that,” the mayor said.
He added that the City of Yelm is paying a lot of money to occupy the current city hall and believes it would be a wise move to move out of that building.
Colt also highlighted some of the proposed amenities to the potential civic center. He first highlighted the first floor.
“On the left would be the museum,” Colt said. “875 square feet is just the museum pieces that were in that building before-hand. You can walk through and see the museum piece. They have a home in the museum and even a little staff house.”
He added that the museum included in a potential civic center would be larger than the previous Yelm Historical Museum, and noted the building would include more space with an actual area for staff.
“On the right, you’ll notice we’ll have a full-on council chambers with a waiting room that’s separate,” Colt said. “Someone coming in and waiting will actually have a separate waiting room. We’ve assembled it very similar to how Thurston County has their chamber board.”
He added that the first floor would house the City of Yelm’s staffing that deals with the public on a regular basis, including the mayor, city administrator, city clerk and parks and recreation.
“The idea is that as the recreation staff continues to grow, you’d have people servicing there instead of building one single office,” Colt said.
The second floor, according to Colt, would provide space for City of Yelm staff who don’t interact with the public on a daily basis, such as the HR director, the finance director and IT. The second floor would also include open office space, storage space, a staff lounge, a copy room, a conference room and a secure, separate space for the IT department to operate.
Colt added that the third floor would include spaces that the public could rent for different meetings or occasions.
“The idea, at some point, is maybe the Chamber (of Commerce) could have a space up here. Someone could rent this and have a conference or a meeting. We have talked to South Puget Sound Community College about hosting classes here,” Colt said. “This could be something, because of how the building is designed, you could have people working and being on the third floor, at night, and the first floor wouldn’t have to be open because the doors can be secure.”
According to Colt, parking at the building will be angled and featured on both sides of the building. He stated there will be “plenty of spaces” to park near the civic center.
“This is the idea, moving forward, of what the city wants to pursue and try to get this civic center, city hall 2.0, and to continue to grow into it,” Colt said. “The benefit of this is it’s the council’s decision. If you want to separate a certain way or do it a certain way, we would do it that way. The idea was always to have some kind of (meeting) space.”
No official action regarding the proposed “Yelm Civic Center” was taken during the meeting on Tuesday, March 3.
