Lewis County commissioners have accepted roughly $4.5 million in federal disaster money to tear down and rebuild an outdated Public Works shop near Adna, redirecting funds that were originally meant to repair a flood-damaged road near Winlock. The Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to accept the grant during its business meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 20. The new two-story building would replace a shop county officials say has become too small for the equipment, dump trucks and materials it's supposed to hold.
Money Meant for a Road Becomes a New Shop
The funding traces back to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which originally designated the grant to repair a portion of Burnett Road, a local access route near Winlock, after heavy and prolonged winter rain damaged it in 2022, according to The Daily Chronicle. Rather than let the money go toward the original road project, the county identified the new Public Works shop as a better use of the funds, and FEMA recently approved the project as a valid alternate use of the grant.
The total project carries approximately $5 million in funding, per the same account. That includes the roughly $4.5 million FEMA award, along with about $250,000 from the state of Washington and a $250,000 match drawn from the Lewis County Roads Fund. A separate report from Citizen Portal cites a more precise FEMA alternate project award figure of $5,033,179.46 for the shop replacement, though that number has not been independently verified against the Chronicle's reporting.
An Outdated Shop Outgrown by Its Own Equipment
The existing shop sits at the intersection of Spooner Road and Washington State Route 6, and the replacement would go up on that same property, according to Lewis County Engineer Wes Anderson. The current building is outdated and no longer fits the necessary equipment for the area, lacking adequate space for dump trucks and material storage, the county says.
Lewis County's Public Works Department plans to first commission a feasibility study before putting a new shop on the property, the Chronicle reports. The proposed structure is described as a two-story metal building with a roof that slopes in a single direction, with a footprint of roughly 10,730 square feet.
Modeled on a Shop Built After a Fire Near Randle
County officials hope to build the new Adna-area shop similar to one constructed near Randle in recent years, after the earlier shop there was destroyed by fire. No construction start date, completion timeline or final building cost has been made public, and the county has not said whether the feasibility study has been commissioned or completed.
FEMA's broader alternative-procedures framework allows for fixed-cost subawards to fund work that repairs, restores or replaces disaster-damaged facilities, according to agency guidance on FEMA.gov. That structure is what allowed Lewis County to pivot disaster-recovery dollars originally tied to road repair toward a facility upgrade instead, once the agency signed off on the switch.
