Palouse St. Elmo building lacks structural integrity

PALOUSE - The City of Palouse met with citizens Thursday, March 7, at the Community Center to discuss updates to the St. Elmo Building project, with the unfortunate news that the building's structure is not salvageable.

Haley and Aldrich, an environmental and geotechnical engineering consultant group from Spokane were present at the meeting to give updates on the building's structural integrity.

According to Haley and Aldrich's technical memorandum, St. Elmo's building does not have adequate structure to resist seismic forces, and has several severe seismic deficiencies with the structure.

Haley and Aldrich reported that significant structural rehabilitation would be necessary to bring the building into compliance with existing building codes, which could potentially cost upwards of $10 to $20 million.

"It is possible that any type of retrofit efforts could result in irreparable damage to the existing masonry or, at the very least, endanger the construction team," states Haley and Aldrich's technical memorandum, with the recommendation that the building be demolished and rebuilt in a manner that complies with current codes but still honors the historic building.

Despite the news, Palouse citizens are looking forward to the potential rebuilding and reuse of the building.

Department of Ecology Small and Rural Community Brownfield Specialist Ali Furmall spoke at the meeting about the feasibility studies that the Community Economic Revitalization Board (CERB) is partly funding.

In July, the City of Palouse was awarded the $50,000 CERB grant, with a $12,500 local match requirement. Avista gave $5,000 of the matching funds, and residents, local store SWALE, and Friends of St. Elmo held a fundraiser selling t-shirts, prints, and tea towels with the St. Elmo image leaving the match at only $4,050.

Furmall said that the grant has two main parts for funding.

The first part, according to Furmall, is an environmental assessment to evaluate the building for hazardous building materials such as asbestos-containing materials or lead-based paint.

Furmall said that the funds would cover any environmental issue that they would have to know to reuse the property. "That funding can be used to assess the environmental condition of the property including the structure itself," she said, noting that even though it sounds like the building's structural integrity is not gonna support reuse. They will also need to know what's in the building materials to see how to safely take it down to not expose people to asbestos or lead-based paint.

"The other part of the grant which is really tonight's conversation, and what all future conversations will feed into is figuring out how the property can be reused what the community wants with it," Furmall said, adding that is what will be feasible based on codes and uses and structure.

Furmall said the funding will be there to provide support for planning the vision of what the community wants to do with the building, and what parts can be saved.

"I just want to say as you guys are talking about and envisioning and thinking about what plans B D and C are those activities may be something that the grant can cover so you have resources to bring to get to the next step," Furmall said.

Palouse residents discussed how they would like to keep the historical integrity of the building while throwing out ideas of possible hotel rooms, affordable housing, or even retail and entertainment purposes.

Palouse Mayor Tim Sievers told community members that the meeting was the first of many to discuss how to move forward to bring the St. Elmo's Building to life again in the City.