Walla Walla commissioners to discuss grant for new offices, museum at fairgrounds
By Dan Thesman on Monday, February 17th, 2025 in Columbia Basin News More Top Stories
WALLA WALLA – The Walla Walla County Board of Commissioners meet tomorrow (Tuesday) at 11:15 a.m. to discuss applying for a grant from the state legislature. The grant will fund new administrative offices and a museum building at the Walla Walla County Fairgrounds, with an estimated cost of $5.4 million.
In 2021, Walla Walla County was gifted a statue of physician and missionary Marcus Whitman, which had been displayed in the National Statuary Hall, located in the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. for over 70 years.
Fairgrounds Manager Greg Lybeck said in the proposal to county commissioners to submit a grant application to the 2025 Washington Legislature that there is a need for a proper display for the Whitman statue and over 150 years of historical items representing the tradition of the Walla Walla County Fair and Frontier Days, including donated wagons from the late 1800s and early 1900s, including the well-known stagecoach that travels to community events throughout the Pacific Northwest.
The project calls for a 14,700+ square foot building, which would combine the museum and administrative offices, sited near the historic pavilion and designed to complement it.
Lybeck says the current fairgrounds office was created about 50 years ago by enclosing the underside of an old set of bleachers, that were later demolished due to unsafe conditions. He adds the roof leaks in several spots and the ceiling has fallen in at different places over the years, without causing injuries. Almost nonexistent insulation, an antiquated HVAC system, and old windows, make the current fairgrounds office hot in the summer and cold in the winter. The grant submission deadline is this Friday.
