SEQUIM — Shipley Center leaders gathered for a groundbreaking ceremony inside its forthcoming new facility at 651 W. Washington St.
Board directors and building committee members commemorated the occasion by scooping dirt and rocks with golden shovels on Feb. 6 along utility ditches recently dug for the senior center.
“The board members and I are very happy and excited about the progress that is now underway with the renovations of our future home for Shipley Center,” board president Renee Millar said in a statement. “Special thank yous go out to all that have made this project become a reality. It is going to be a great addition to our community.”
Shipley Center’s board agreed to purchase the former JCPenney building in June 2024 for $2.775 million with escrow closing that August. The new facility will nearly triple its current footprint of 11,000 square feet at 921 E. Hammond St. to 29,000 square feet.
Michael Smith, the center’s executive director and the new building’s project manager, said in a previous interview that the new building will allow for more space and upwards of 10 activities at once.
Mary Ellen Reed, an 86-year-old building committee member, said she’s been visiting or volunteering at the center for 20 years and had played canasta earlier in the day before she went to the groundbreaking.
She said the possibilities of the new building are wonderful.
“As we get older, we need to stay social,” she said. “We can’t be isolated.”
Some of the building’s amenities will include a new gymnasium for basketball, pickleball and volleyball, a dance hall for all abilities and exercise classes, an art room, classroom, library, fiber arts room, a craft store, game rooms and a new restaurant space for Leo’s Cafe with a private dining area, public dining area and a large commercial kitchen.
Wall framing had begun and ditches had been dug for water and sewer lines for central bathrooms. The center of the building will feature three bathrooms with five men’s and women’s fixtures in each bathroom plus one unisex bathroom.
There also will be a unisex bathroom in the gymnasium, and they will keep two fixtures in the men’s bathroom and three stalls in the women’s bathroom by the cafe.
Smith said the front entrance will feature an automated sliding glass door, and there will be large windows along a large portion of the north wall.
Smith said they’ve set a goal to be inside the building by the center’s traditional Christmas dinner in December.
The building was last leased to JCPenney from 1994-2021, and it was built in 1981 and occupied by Safeway before it moved across Washington Street.
The total renovation budget is about $2.5 million, Smith said.
Once inside the renovated building, Smith has said they’d look to sell the current building and adjacent land previously planned for an annex.
The center was named after benefactor R. Leo Shipley, who made large donations to the senior center and the Baywood Village mobile home park that the center now manages.
Anyone can join Shipley Center’s membership, but only people 50 and older can sit on the board or vote for board directors. Activities are open to anyone, but members receive a 50 percent discount.
Membership costs $50 for one person and $85 for any two people living at the same address.
For more information about membership, a tour of the building or questions about programming, call the Shipley Center at 360-683-6806 or visit shipleycenter.org.
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Matthew Nash is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. He can be reached by email at matthew.nash@sequimgazette.com.
