Michael Smith and the faithful at the Shipley Center are no longer settling for Plan B.

Smith, the executive director of Sequim’s senior activities center, announced last week the purchase of the former JCPenney building at 651 W. Washington St.

“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Shipley Center to make as its home one of the largest buildings in Sequim,” Smith said.

“We look forward to creating inviting spaces for people to come and experience friendship, recreation and education.”

Originally built in 1981 as a Safeway grocery store, the 29,000-square-foot building in the Sequim Village Center at the corner of Seventh Avenue and West Washington Street was later leased to JCPenney from 1994-2021, and has since been vacant.

The building went on the market for sale for an asking price of $3 million, Smith said.

The Shipley Center’s board of directors unanimously voted in June to authorize Smith to negotiate the purchase of a Sequim landmark, and that escrow closed on the $2.8 million all-cash sale Aug. 8, after all inspections — including seismic, electrical, plumbing, structural and others — were completed.

Photo courtesy of Shipley Center / The former JCPenney building is now owned by the Shipley Center, Sequim’s senior activities center.

The all-cash purchase was first announced to those in attendance at the Shipley Center’s “Evening in Spain” fundraising dinner on June 21. Smith said the announcement was met with unanimous support from Shipley Center members and donors in attendance.

The size of the former JCPenney building outsizes both of the Shipley Center’s current building on East Hammond Street and its proposed health and wellness annex building by about 10,000 square feet.

“All of what we do would be under one roof,” Smith said. “It’s best for our seniors; once you get yourself in the door, you can go to the cafe [and] do everything you like to do without having to go outside.”

He said the center will continue to fundraise to cover the costs of renovating the newly-purchased building. He didn’t have an exact figure but estimated the changes — notably, adding one or two more sets of restrooms (the current building has one set) and a kitchen for Leo’s Cafe — will cost at least $1 million.

“Right now it’s just a really big square room, no windows, no skylights, no room dividers, no doors,” Smith said. “If you shopped at Penneys, you know what it looks like. The fitting rooms are still there.”

To that end, center officials — through Sequim Senior Services, the nonprofit legal entity that operates the Shipley Center — will look to sell the property earmarked for its proposed annex on East Hammond Street, across for the current center, as well as 5.8 acres of land on Washington Harbor Loop that center members had previously targeted for its expanded center in the 2010s.

The current center could also be sold in the end as well, Smith said, though that would take some upgrading.

“We’re trying to do all of this with no debt,” he said.

Smith said he’s likely being optimistic in saying the Shipley Center in its new downtown location could file for an occupancy permits and open in 18 months to two years, after fundraising and renovations are complete.

Plan B

With Sequim’s senior center usage increasing in the 2000s, center officials targeted construction of a $10.4 million new center to be built on a 5.8-acre tract on Washington Harbor Loop near Simdars Road, near the Washington Street exit off U.S. Highway 101, in the early 2010s.

(The size of that proposed building, Smith noted was about 30,000 square feet, or roughly the size of the JCPenney building.)

“We did not have the funding [then], but we had the dream,” Smith said. “We lowered our expectations.”

Smith and Shipley Center’s board then looked to expand services at the current building with The Shipley Center Health & Wellness Annex, filing an application for the 6,500-square-foot structure in 2021

The one-story recreational facility was designed to house an exercise room, demonstration (commercial) kitchen, patio, administrative office, conference room, restrooms and storage space.

However, having an annex across the street from the main building was always problematic, Smith said, and an option he and the board considered a “Plan B.”

However, when Smith said Shipley Center representatives started looking at other options, the bid using prevailing wages for construction came in at about $8 million.

“We switched gears,” Smith said, noting that with a bid of that size “you start looking for alternatives pretty fast.”

The day after he got the bid, Smith said, he began searching for commercial real estate locations for sale and happened upon the building formerly housing JCPenney, listed both for lease and for sale.

He said he wrote a letter to the current owners of Sequim Village Center explaining why the Shipley Center would beneficial as a neighbor, with its users possibly looking to do business with the current tenants such as Mariner Café, The Sweet Spot and others.

“We also want to be good neighbors to the other fine businesses in Sequim Village Center,” Smith said.

Building details 

While much of the renovation will involve dividing up the space inside the largely empty JCPenney building, Smith said the structure itself is in good shape, with a new roof installed in 2020 and seven new HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) units installed between 2015-2018.

The property also comes with ample parking.

The upgrade in space, Smith noted, will mean the center can have rooms for specific activities rather than many of them being “multi-use.” That, he said, makes it “a lot easier on staff on moving chairs and table” to fit the room’s changing activity or usage.

Photo courtesy of Shipley Center / The former JCPenney building is now owned by the Shipley Center, Sequim’s senior activities center.

Smith said the downtown location is a boon for a number of Shipley Center users.

“I’ve gotten positive feedback — some of them could walk to the [new location],” Smith said. “There are some mobile home parks, assisted living [facilities] in that walking distance.

“I feel like more of Sequim will know who and where were than where we are currently.”

The architect for the project will be Roy Hellwig of Tormod Hellwig.

Purchase of the building, Smith said in a press release, was made possible by members of Shipley Center who have donated over the past 15 years in fundraisers, grants and legacy gifts from the estates of R. Leo Shipley, Fred Chan, Shirley Foss, Beth Versteeg, Lucy Willis, Peggy Moon Anderson and others.

Grants that have been received for the capital campaign include $100,000 from the First Federal Community Foundation, $50,000 from the Albert Haller Foundation, and $30,000 from the Benjamin Phillips Fund of the Seattle Foundation.

“We’ve been tucking some of that [benevolence] away for a future building,” Smith said. “Fortunately we were prepared to have the cash on hand to do it.”

For more about the Shipley Center, visit shipleycenter.org.

Graphic courtesy of Shipley Center / The Shipley Center’s purchase of the former JCPenney building at 651 W Washington St. features ample parking for center users.