KINGS VALLEY — A part of the rural Benton County landscape for 132 years, Kings Valley Community Hall at the corner of Kings Valley Highway and Maxfield Creek Road provides a direct link to the region’s past.
Through the efforts of Kings Valley Community Trust, a nonprofit organization that owns and operates the former church, the old Gothic-style structure went through an upgrade a couple of weeks ago with an interior paint job.
“This room had flaking, peeling and yellow paint … it was in poor shape,” Elaine Daggett, Kings Valley Community Trust board member, said early last week during a small gathering that celebrated the project’s completion.
Two key contributors to the effort were Equilibrium Painting, a Corvallis-based company that emphasizes sustainability, and Sherwin-Williams, which donated all of the paint used in the project. Equilibrium contributed its services with a deep discount, the only charges involving employee labor at the site.
“We’ve done a few donation projects like this and we just try to help out with the community,” said Jon Matheson, Equilibrium Painting crew lead. “The environmental stuff they have going on around here really interests us and we’re a sustainable company, so they were attracted to us because of that.”
A customer of Equilibrium Painting helped bring together the two entities. Michael Rhoades, who serves as a board member for Kings Valley Community Trust, had work done at this residence just down the road and he mentioned the organization’s environmental work.
Melanie Brown, Equilibrium administrative manager, said it’s important to the company to support organizations that emphasize such endeavors.
“It was just kind of that conservation, sustainability underlying focus to kind of help them in their efforts,” said Brown, who co-founded Equilibrium six years ago with Patrick Bruce. “The more money that they can generate from this space is going to be more money towards conservation that they can actually put out.”
Kings Valley Community Trust not only manages the historic building but also a 155-acre wildlife refuge located across the highway behind Kings Valley Charter School. Students from the school have access to the property for educational purposes.
“That property was donated to the trust about two years ago and we manage it in conjunction with Greenbelt Land Trust — they hold some easements on it — and Bonneville Power Administration also holds some easements. So all of that land is in a long-term conservation easement,” Daggett said. “Because we’re a nonprofit managing this wildlife conservation area, it was a pretty attractive project for them with the green branding that they really care about.”
Matheson said the paint job took about three days to finish.
“We thought it might take more because there was substantial water damage so we had to prime all of that first with a stain-blocking primer,” he said. “Luckily, it worked well.”
Lead abatement was a part of the work.
“It’s lead, so there’s cautionary stuff involved with that — no sanding and you have to collect everything in plastic,” Matheson said. “But you know, we use the best paint. We use Emerald, which is low VOC2, so it is the most environmentally friendly.”
VOC2 paint is a type that contains low levels of volatile organic compounds.
“The other perk about it is that it’s actually low odor … and you’re not breathing in those volatile organic compounds once the paint job is done,” Brown said. “Our customers love it for community spaces like this where people are in here for yoga and for weddings. People don’t want to be breathing in those chemicals.”
Alicia Figueroa, sales representative for the Corvallis-Albany area Sherwin Williams, said her company tries to find opportunities to partner with contractors to give back to communities.
“This is one of many projects that we’ve done this year and we just love to reach out,” Figueroa said. “We haven’t done anything this far north and so it was a great opportunity to give back. They did a great job fixing this place up and it looks awesome.”
The building dates back to the early 1890s when it was built by the Rev. Thomas A. Yost and dedicated in 1892. Decades later, Kings Valley lumber executive and cattle rancher Emory E. Moore came to own the building and he donated it to the Kings Valley community. Following his death in 1975, a fund was established in his memory to raise funds for restoration and maintenance.
Renovations have been done over the years since, including a new foundation in the late 1970s.
“The building has just had some deferred maintenance over the decades,” Daggett said. “This is improving it for public use and also just the maintenance that needs to be done.”
The building is used for various community functions, including holiday parties, yoga and weddings. An annual Christmas party for the community is planned for this coming Saturday (a potluck event that begins at 3 p.m.).
“This repainting has spurred getting bids for insulation,” said Daggett when asked what other work might be coming next. “We’re talking about replacing the windows and the roof needs to be replaced and the exterior needs to be repainted. So we have some pretty big projects coming up.”
The organization had done some previous fundraising to go toward the purchase of the wildlife reserve property, Daggett said, but the land ended up being donated by Cliff and Gay Hall. As a result, funds raised for that purpose are now going toward projects at the historic building.
“We have some money that has been donated by the community but we are definitely working towards gathering more donations and also trying to secure grants from local partners that can help support this kind of community building,” she said.
For those interested in donating to Kings Valley Community Trust, checks can be mailed to 23803 Maxfield Creek Road, Philomath, OR 97370. For those with questions, the organization can be reached via email at kingsvalleytrust@gmail.com.