New Edmonds community center edges closer to funding goal

Published 1:30 am Sunday, December 25, 2016

EDMONDS — The $11 million drive to build a new community center reached another milestone with two recent six-figure donations.

The C. Keith Birkenfeld Memorial Trust has announced a grant of $350,000.

And the Hazel Miller Foundation has announced it will donate $300,000.

“They’re both significant for what they say,” said Farrell Fleming, executive director of the Edmonds Senior Center.

The grant from the Hazel Miller Foundation is the biggest it has ever given, he said. The foundation’s focus is on projects in Edmonds and south Snohomish County.

The Birkenfeld trust was founded by a retired teacher and school administrator, who launched the foundation with $14 million. It makes one-time grants to organizations improving the quality of life in the Puget Sound region. Kitsap County charitable organizations receive first consideration.

Fleming said the Edmonds Senior Center is working with a new community center in Kingston and that Kitsap County is just a ferry ride away from Edmonds.

The money will help pay for a new 26,000-square-foot Edmonds Waterfront Center that will replace the Edmonds Senior Center on Railroad Avenue.

Plans call for programming that serves youth, families and older adults.

That goal of connecting generations is what interested the Birkenfeld trust in the project, Fleming said. “Older and younger people working together on something — we would like to do a lot of that.”

So far about $4.7 million has been pledged for the project, Fleming said. Among the recent donations is a pledge announced earlier this month of $2 million from local travel business entrepreneur Rick Steves.

And, if $1 million can be raised in the Edmonds community, Steves has pledged another million.

“I think people are starting to get a feel for the kind of asset this will be for the community,” Fleming said.

Some $2.25 million is included in the Gov. Jay Inslee’s budget for the building. But it must also win approval from the Legislature.

The goal is to start construction on the building in the first quarter of 2018 and for it to open about a year later.

Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486; salyer@heraldnet.com.