The senior center is being built to completely renovate the interior of the 80-year-old building, including creating a second meeting space on the ground floor to host events. The center is seeking grants and outside funding to repair the building’s exterior cladding.

Catlin Hall is owned by the Town of Kelso. The nonprofit Kelso Senior Center Association leases the building to the city for $1 a year to run operations.

The Kelso Senior Center hosts weekly bingo nights, bridge games, dance lessons, and meetings for the Kiwanis Club and Grace and Truth City Church in its main meeting space. The room is rented out when not in use for regular events.

“We make a lot of noise when there are plenty of bridge players and there is no other place to meet,” said association board member Guy Tow.

The association is taking the lead in the ongoing renovations. They are building a second main meeting room on the ground floor, in an area that was once a shower room for Catlin Pool. New hallways are added to lead to the new space around the expanded center kitchen. Further work is underway to make the room accessible to visitors with disabilities.

Interior renovations would allow the center to accommodate small conventions. Tow said Kelso has few buildings that can accommodate a 100-person meeting, including breakout rooms and places for multiple speakers to present at the same time.

Catlin Hall already has its first convention booked for late August, when the National Association of Manufactured Home Owners comes to Kelso for its annual meeting. Dick Sims, a member of the Kelso Senior Center board of directors, is the association’s vice president.

Exterior building maintenance work proved to be more difficult than interior renovations. While members of the senior center did much of the interior work themselves, Sims said a different approach was needed for the repairs and painting of the siding.

“I’m going to be 74. I can’t climb ladders and roofs to get these pieces off. We need this rented,” Sims said.

Currently, the project is stalled due to cost issues. Neither the association of senior centers nor the city were able to convince a company to bid for the surfacing work, leaving the cost of the project and the extent of the surfacing damage unknown.

The association plans to apply for a grant from the Washington Department of Commerce to cover part of the project. The Building Communities Fund provides eligible groups with up to 25% of the cost of rehabilitating community centers and social service centers in low-income or distressed areas.

City council members have provided verbal support at the past two council meetings for the senior center to apply for the Department of Commerce grant to carry out the exterior repairs.

City manager Andy Hamilton told council it was not worth bidding for an estimate for the project now, but re-bid for the project whenever funding sufficient was obtained to complete the work.

Tow hopes the project will keep moving forward.

“As a community, we can make it happen,” he said. “Even if it’s $100,000, that’s not a lot of money these days.”

City of Kelso staff also considered combining the Kelso Senior Center with other uses, such as housing or the city’s public library, into a community center to be built elsewhere. Hamilton told council on Tuesday that a feasibility study on the proposal would be completed by October.