The Dalles City Council decides to preserve Waldron/Gitchell Building

The last formal discussion of the building was at a council meeting in December 2021. At that meeting, it was explained that the building’s location near the train tracks presented unique challenges. It is considered “landlocked,” which virtually eliminated the possibility of the city selling the building to another owner, as an easement would be needed, City Attorney Jonathan Kara said at the meeting. According to Kara, a permanent easement could be a liability.

With the information presented at the December meeting, the council authorized city staff to commission an engineering firm to analyze the feasibility and cost of different options for the building.

Now, nearly a year later, City Manager Matthew Klebes, who was not yet working with the city at the time of the initial decision, presented the council with the report, performed by engineering firm KPFF.

According to Klebes, there were four options presented by KPFF’s report. First, the building would remain on-site and unoccupied with no major repairs or upgrades, but the city would develop a plan to preserve and maintain the building as it is. The HVAC system would need to be updated, and there would need to be repairs to the northwest corner of the building and the roof. These costs were estimated to be $76,000 over the next five to 20 years.

The second option was to completely repair and upgrade the building where it currently is, which would cost anywhere from $1.6 to $2.2 million. Alternatively, the third option was to completely repair and relocate the building to somewhere new, which would cost anywhere from $3.3 to $4.5 million.

Finally, the fourth option was to demolish the building, which would have an upfront cost ranging from $180,000 to $240,000.

At the meeting, Klebes said the high price ranges of two and three made them much more ambitious than the others, which is why he was choosing to focus on options one and four, though two and three remained on the table if the council was interested in discussing them.

In his report, one of the things Klebes focused on was what the city could do with the building, answering the question of “to what end?” He referenced a project done in Astoria, where old signs from historical buildings were recreated and projected onto the buildings at night; they called these “ghost signs.”

Klebes said doing something like creating “ghost signs” could draw attention to downtown while highlighting the city’s history.

During public comment, many members of the community spoke in support of option one, including members of the organization “Friends of the Waldron Brothers Drugstore,” as well as Susan Buce of the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center and former Wasco County Commissioner Bill Lennox.

“When you destroy something, you no longer have any options,” Buce said of the possibility of demolition.

City councilors also favored the preservation of the building.

“In my mind, option one is a slam dunk,” Councilor Dan Richardson said. “There’s no need to demolish it. It’s not harming anything, and the investments to keep it as some sort of asset are pretty modest.”

Following informal consensus by the council, Mayor Richard Mays directed Klebes and city staff to pursue the preservation of the building. Klebes said he would contact KPFF for more information and would work on developing a maintenance plan so they could request the proper funds when budget planning takes place in the spring.