New SOAR building arrives

Last updated 5/9/2000 at Noon

The Sisters Organization for Activities and Recreation has a brand-new 1,760-square-foot headquarters on Locust Street in Sisters.

The modular unit was trucked in from Modern Building Systems of Aumsville, Oregon, on Wednesday, May 3, and assembled on the grounds of Sisters Middle School.

The building will house SOAR's after school clubhouse, provide space for arts and crafts classes and allow SOAR to provide supervised activities for half-day kindergartners during the hours when they are not in school, according to SOAR director Tom Coffield.

The middle school will also use the building, which will alleviate some of the space crunch at the crowded facility.

"SOAR is going to give us use of one classroom building during the day," said Sisters Middle School principal Rich Shultz.

What classes will be scheduled there has not been determined, Shultz said.

"We may not get into one until next year," he said.

The addition of the new building also frees up some of the area in the current SOAR building adjacent to the new addition, which will allow the middle school art program to expand its facilities.

The middle school is expecting 30 more students next year, in an already crowded campus.

"(The classroom) is going to help," Shultz said. "It's not going to totally eliminate our space crunch, but it's going to help."

Coffield says SOAR will start running programs in the new building by the end of the month.

Work crews still need to run electricity and septic hook-ups, and a Western-style porch is planned, both to provide shelter and to help the modular structure fit in.

According to Coffield, the $52,000 building was funded through grants from the Fred Meyer Foundation, Jeld-Wen foundation, the Seven Feathers Foundation, a private donation and funds raised from the SOAR Into the Millennium New Year's party.

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