SEQUIM – Michael Smith and the believers at Shipley Center are no longer satisfied with Plan B.
Smith, executive director of the Sequim Senior Center, announced the purchase of the former JCPenney building at 651 W. Washington St.
“This is a unique opportunity for the Shipley Center to make one of the largest buildings in Sequim its home,” Smith said.
“We look forward to creating welcoming spaces where people can experience friendship, recreation and education.”
Originally built in 1981 as a Safeway grocery store, the 29,000-square-foot building in the Sequim Village Center at the corner of Seventh Avenue and West Washington Street was later leased to JCPenney from 1994 to 2021 and has been vacant since then.
The building was offered for sale at a price of $3 million, Smith said.
The Shipley Center board voted unanimously in June to hire Smith to negotiate the purchase of the Sequim landmark. Escrow for the $2.8 million cash sale closed on Aug. 8 after all inspections – including seismic, electrical, plumbing, construction and others – were completed.
The purchase was first announced to those in attendance at the Shipley Center’s “Evening in Spain” benefit dinner on June 21. Smith said the announcement was met with unanimous support from Shipley Center members and donors in attendance.
The size of the former JCPenney building exceeds both the current Shipley Center building on East Hammond Street and the planned health and wellness addition by approximately 10,000 square feet.
“Everything we do would be under one roof,” Smith said. “That’s the best thing for our seniors. Once you walk in the door, you can go to the cafe and do whatever you like to do without having to leave the house.”
He said the center will continue to raise funds to cover the cost of renovating the newly acquired building. He did not have exact figures but estimated that the changes — particularly adding one or two more restrooms (the current building has one) and a kitchen for Leo’s Café — will cost at least $1 million.
“Right now it’s just a really big square room, no windows, no skylights, no dividers, no doors,” Smith said. “If you’ve shopped at Penneys you know what it looks like. The dressing rooms are still there.”
To that end, center officials — through Sequim Senior Services, the nonprofit entity that operates the Shipley Center — will seek to sell the property earmarked for the planned addition on East Hammond Street across from the current center, as well as 5.8 acres of land on the Washington Harbor Loop that center members first envisioned for their expanded center in the 2010s.
The current center could also be sold, Smith said, but that would require some modernization.
“We are trying to do all this without debt,” he said.
Smith said he was probably being too optimistic when he said the Shipley Center would apply for planning permission at its new downtown location and could open in 18 months to two years after fundraising and renovations are completed.
Plan B
As use of the Sequim Senior Center increased in the 2000s, center officials sought to build a new $10.4 million center on a 5.8-acre site on the Washington Harbor Loop off Simdars Road, near the Washington Street exit of U.S. Highway 101, in the early 2010s.
According to Smith, the size of the planned building is about 2,800 square meters, roughly the size of the JCPenney building.
“We didn’t have the resources (at the time), but we had the dream,” Smith said. “We lowered our expectations.”
The Smith and Shipley Center Board of Directors then wanted to expand services in the existing building with the Shipley Center Health & Wellness Annex and submitted an application for the 6,500-square-foot building in 2021.
The single-storey leisure facility has been designed to accommodate a gym, (commercial) demonstration kitchen, terrace, administration office, conference room, toilets and storage rooms.
However, an addition across the street from the main building would be problematic, Smith said. He and the board considered that option a “Plan B.”
When Shipley Center officials looked at other options, Smith said, the offer, taking into account typical construction wages, was about $8 million.
“We changed course,” Smith said, noting that with an offer of this magnitude, “you start looking for alternatives pretty quickly.”
The day after receiving the offer, Smith said he began searching for commercial properties for sale and came across the building that formerly housed JCPenney, which was listed for both lease and sale.
He said he wrote a letter to the current owners of Sequim Village Center explaining why Shipley Center would be beneficial as a neighbor because its users may be interested in doing business with current tenants such as Mariner Café, The Sweet Spot and others.
“We also want to be good neighbors to the other good businesses in Sequim Village Center,” Smith said.
Building details
While much of the renovation will involve divvying up the spaces within the largely empty JCPenney building, Smith said the building itself is in good shape, with a new roof installed in 2020 and seven new heating, ventilation and air conditioning units installed between 2015 and 2018.
The property also includes ample parking.
The spatial expansion allows the center to have rooms dedicated to specific activities rather than “multi-use” many of them, Smith said. That makes it “a lot easier for staff to move chairs and tables” to accommodate the changing activity or use of the space, he added.
Smith said the downtown location is a blessing for many Shipley Center users.
“I’ve had positive feedback – some of them were able to walk to the (new location),” Smith said. “There are some mobile home parks and assisted living facilities within walking distance.”
“I feel like more people in Sequim will know who and where we are than where we are now.”
The architect of the project will be Roy Hellwig of Tormod Hellwig.
The purchase of the building was made possible by members of the Shipley Center who have donated donations, grants and estate gifts from the estates of R. Leo Shipley, Fred Chan, Shirley Foss, Beth Versteeg, Lucy Willis, Peggy Moon Anderson and others over the past 15 years, Smith said in a news release.
Grants received for the capital campaign include $100,000 from the First Federal Community Foundation, $50,000 from the Albert Haller Foundation, and $30,000 from the Seattle Foundation’s Benjamin Phillips Fund.
“We set aside some of those donations for a future building,” Smith said. “Fortunately, we had the cash on hand to do it.”
For more information about the Shipley Center, visit shipleycenter.org.
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Michael Dashiell is the editor of the Sequim Gazette for the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which also includes Sound Publishing’s other newspapers, Peninsula Daily News and Forks Forum. He can be reached at [email protected].
