Medical Lakes Parks and Recreation department to use former Pine Lodge gym

By RYAN LANCASTER

Staff Reporter

Medical Lake will now be able to use gymnasium space at the former Pine Lodge Corrections Center through a short term lease agreement with the Department of Social and Health Services.

On Tuesday Medical Lake City Council agreed to pay an amount not to exceed $1,500 per month to cover the facility's gas heating bill. In return the city's Parks and Recreation department will have full use of the gym for indoor community sports activities, such as basketball and volleyball. City Administrator Doug Ross previously said the city plans to use the facility in January and February each year.

In their last council meeting, Jan. 18, members questioned why DSHS would require the city to pay the gas bill for the entire 45-acre Pine Lodge facility when it is not the sole user. DSHS was leasing Pine Lodge to the Department of Corrections before state budget cuts led to the prison's closure last May. Since then some buildings have been used by Consolidated Support Services, the maintenance and operations arm of DSHS that supports Eastern State Hospital and Lakeland Village, and ESH has permission to use the facility's greenhouse and adjacent gardens for their patient horticulture program.

“If you take the whole (gas) bill and you proportion it out by the hours we would use, we would be a minute portion compared to the 40 hours a week CSS uses it,” Councilwoman Shirley Maike said.

Other councilmembers agreed, saying CSS should pay its fair share, but Councilman Jeff King said even if the city has to pay the full bill it's a great deal when compared with other sports facility rentals. “I know it seems like it's a lot of money and we're not used to that, but as somebody that has had to rent facilities before for sporting events that is less than $6 an hour, which is extremely reasonable,” he said. “If you were to go rent a facility for a team to practice in Spokane they're going be about $100 per hour.” He estimated the gym would be used about 86 hours in a month.

On Tuesday Ross said that On Tuesday Ross said that while the maximum the city will pay is $1,500, the utility bill will likely be much less. “I don't think it will be near that much; we set the temperature at 60 degrees… and it will only come on from the hours of 4 p.m. and 9 p.m.,” he said..

Up until now the city has had an interlocal agreement with the Medical Lake School District allowing Parks and Recreation to use gyms at Hallett Elementary, Medical Lake Elementary and the middle school, Ross said. In exchange the city pays for custodial services after each use.

Parks and recreation director Ashlee King said it's sometimes been difficult to work around school schedules with limited space, especially during the busy indoor sports season. Adult co-ed volleyball just started a few weeks ago and youth basketball started in early January with a record number of teams, both running until early March. King said yoga, jazzercise and other exercise classes are currently being held at City Hall but in the future she'd “ideally like to take full advantage of gym space” at Pine Lodge.

Ryan Lancaster can be reached at [email protected].