Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
An effort to start a community center has begun in Oakesdale.
A non-profit organization called Oakesdale Coffee House filed for articles of incorporation in October.
The group is headed by board president Dave Hooks, along with vice president Nancy Hathaway and Secretary/Treasurer Pia Hooks.
“There’s no place in Oakesdale, no community center to speak of, it’s one of the things that Oakesdale is missing,” said Dave Hooks.
The goal of the group is to utilize one of the empty buildings in town.
“We don’t have a building yet,” Hooks said. “Depending on what building we can get will determine what we’ll be able to do.”
The group’s business plan states that it “assumes it will acquire the former site of Country Attic (507 North First Street) as it is a large building that will be easiest for us to adopt.” The plan goes on to say “any of the other vacant buildings in Oakesdale can be made to meet our needs.”
The business plan also states that the Oakesdale Coffee House would have “at least three full-time employees including the general manager, and as many other part-time employees as possible.”
Hooks, who has lived in Oakesdale for six years, said the group would like to have a place which serves coffee and snacks and has computers for residents to use.
“The library is only open 8-10 hours a week,” he said.
The Coffee House will be looking for grants. They haven’t applied for any yet, Hooks said.
“We’re just early in the process of doing that,” said Hooks, who earned a masters in Urban and Regional Planning two years ago from Eastern Washington University.
“We don’t have a budget now, we have some ideas but we don’t have anything to do.”
He indicated that another element of the community center could be an emergency food bank and distribution center for county food banks.
Hooks suggests that, instead of local food banks going to Second Harvest in Spokane to gather items, they could pick them up in Oakesdale at a distribution center.
“That means we have to be able to store five to ten tons of food,” said Hooks.
He also mentioned offering community planning and mapping services from the building.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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