The Edmonds Yacht Club banquet room was filled to capacity Thursday morning as Edmonds Senior Center friends and supporters heard the latest updates on the new Community Waterfront Center and lend their personal and financial support.

A total of $64,435 was raised to continue senior center programs through construction of the new waterfront center, smashing the event’s $50,000 goal and setting a new record for the event.

“We are overwhelmed with the generosity of this community,” said Senior Center Executive Director, Farrell Fleming.

“You are going to hear some exciting things this morning regarding the ‘what’ for the Edmonds Waterfront Center,” said Senior Center Board President Bob Rinehart as he welcomed attendees. “But I also want to talk about the ‘why,’ because the ‘why’ forms the solid foundation of this entire effort. In the other Washington on the East Coast they are circling the wagons. What we are doing is widening the circle. That’s really the essence right there.

“The Edmonds Senior Center is giving back and embracing the wider community,” Rinehart continued. “Partisanship, polarization, you name it, are infectious and contagious. We’re going to inoculate ourselves by doing things together, building trust and building community with a new Waterfront Center that will serve our entire population from infants to seniors.”

With ground already broken and construction in full swing, the board and others behind the project had some exciting new announcements about what to expect when the doors open late next year.

First, get ready for some great food.

After a thorough RFP process led by JGL Food Service Consultants, Feedme Hospitality (Salt & Iron, Bar Dojo, The Market Fishmonger and Shooby Doo Catering) was selected as the exclusive food service partner at the Waterfront Center. A staff of four to six, including a head chef, will provide restaurant-quality daily lunches (subsidized for low-income seniors, market rate for the general public), coffee and gelato at the coffee kiosk in the community lounge, and be available to cater all events at the new center.

In other news, the center announced a special partnership with Operation Military Families Care to offer health and wellness services to local veterans and their families.

“We are thrilled about this partnership” said Operation Military Family Cares Executive Director Mike Schindler. “There are limited resources for veterans in Edmonds and the surrounding region. This partnership will allow us to remove the barriers to service by offering free counseling and tele-health in this new community hub.”

And finally, attendees were thrilled to hear of the board’s recent action to make the new center a model of energy efficiency by including the latest in green-building technology.

“We realized that the opportunity to build community infrastructure like the waterfront center only comes along every 50-100 years, and we didn’t want lose this opportunity to show our commitment to environmental stewardship,” said Capital Campaign Director & Project Manager Daniel Johnson.  “We’d already planned to meet LEED Silver requirements with partial roof-top solar, but we wanted to do more.”

Johnson went on to describe how the board and center planners joined forces with the Edmonds chapter of Interfaith Climate Action to map out the broader goal of meeting LEED Gold standards by going full solar and using no fossil fuels on site. But with construction already underway, was it possible to change course?

An emergency meeting was held with construction contractors, Snohomish PUD and other players to explore feasibility, and all agreed it would be possible, but would add half a million dollars to the costs and delay the project for a month.

The board met Oct. 16 to consider the proposal, and after much discussion voted unanimously to take the leap, delay the project, add the additional half million to the already constrained budget, and go for the gold. (Learn more about LEED certification levels here.)

“By this action the board ensured that the center would serve as a continuing example of promoting environmental values, stewardship and education,” Johnson said. “It was one of the most courageous moments I have ever seen in a boardroom.”

Kudos were quick to come in. Among those praising the action was Snohomish PUD commissioner Rebecca Wolfe. “I was thrilled to learn that the board of directors for the Edmonds Waterfront Center voted to support the ambitious goal of achieving a LEED Gold designation for our community center,” she said.  “I am proud and grateful to represent a district that values, supports, and wants to lead on clean, green energy.”

Stan Gent of Interfaith Climate Action added, “We congratulate the waterfront center team. These steps, along with their plans for solar energy generation, will result in a building for a sustainable future, one we will all be proud to support.”

— Story by Larry Vogel