Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
With a snip of the scissors, more than a decade of working and waiting ended for East Linn Christian Academy with the dedication of the first phase of the school’s new multi-purpose Activity Resource Center.
School founders Harold and Dorothy Grove were joined on Thursday afternoon, Dec. 6, at the school’s Victory Campus, outside Lebanon, by a crowd of approximately 100 students, board members, parents and staffers to cut a ribbon provided by ambassadors from the Lebanon Chamber of Commerce.
“I’m not going to look at Mr. Grove today because both of us might start crying,” said school superintendent Jim Hill, who is also principal of the Victory Campus, the school’s high school and junior high.
The groundbreaking for the Activity Resource Center was held more than 10 years ago, school spokesman Kory Bates said. Work slowly progressed on the building over the years until last spring, when school trustees decided to finish the first phase with a loan.
Bates, who is in charge of fund-raising for the school, said pledges totaling more than $100,000 per year, along with a school improvement fee paid by students’ families, are keeping debt payments flowing and he said officials hope to have the loan paid off within the next six years.
The total project is expected to cost $3.1 million, of which a little more than $1.2 million has been raised over the first 10 years. It is one of a number of improvements the school has recently completed, including putting an all-weather rubberized surface on the track in the summer of 2006.
The 20,000-square-foot building includes a wood-floored gymnasium that contains two full basketball courts and can seat about 1,000 people, locker rooms, a weight room, classrooms and offices.
A second phase, still to be built, will include a theater that will double as a practice facility, band and choir rooms, a science lab and a cafeteria.
The gravel parking lot was paved earlier in the week, right up to a couple of hours before the ribbon cutting. Attendees could feel the tacky asphalt under their shoes.
“I’m glad to see it come to completion, but we still need to wait on the Lord for completion of the financial end of it,” said Harold Grove, who founded the school with 32 students in 1982 in the then-vacant Fairview School building.
Five of his grandchildren now attend East Linn, which has 310 enrolled this year.
“God honored the decision we made prior to 1982 to start the school,” said Grove, who was ill earlier in the week but got out of bed to attend the ribbon cutting. “We’ve grown quite rapidly. We had to have a qualified, committed staff to make that possible.”
ELCA bought the Liberty School building from the Sweet Home School District, which currently houses kindergarten through grade six. When the school outgrew that facility, Grove donated a total of 23 acres of property on a hilltop southeast of Lebanon. Two classroom buildings were constructed, a track, an all-purpose building and a variety of smaller facilities used for offices and storage.
The one thing the school has lacked in recent years has been a facility in which to hold inside athletic events, performances and larger school gatherings such as graduations. East Linn has played at Seven Oaks Middle School in recent years and has had to find other accommodations, including using the gym at Liberty. Concerts and fund-raisers have been held at the Lebanon Boys and Girls Club, local churches and other venues.
Hill, who is in his 19th season as boys basketball coach at the high school, said his team has not had a home court for 15 or 16 of those years. But, he said, trying to build such an ambitious project has had its discouraging moments.
“For many years I wondered why we just didn’t have a gym or build a smaller gym,” he said, staying in the foyer in front of newly constructed trophy cases. “But this is worth it.
“This hasn’t just hit me today. It’s hit me all along the way. I’ve been watching each step of the process.”
Grove said he appreciated the work done by Knife River Corporation.
“I’m very impressed with the craftsmanship,” he said. “I don’t see any sloppy work.”
The new building will get its first use Thursday, Dec. 13, when students perform their Winter Celebration. The boys and girls varsity basketball teams will open their home schedules on Dec. 15.
“We talked about building a gym but it’s so much more, as people will find out on the 13th,” Hill said.