POSTED: Monday, May. 12, 2008
Uncertainty over ‘landmark’ at Smith and Northwest
County weighs its options for site that housed poor farm, hospital
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closeSome employees say ghosts haunt the county building at Smith Road and Northwest Drive. A history book says the original property owner, stabbed to death with a butcher knife for flirting with a man’s wife, is buried somewhere on the property.
Stories abound about the building, which over its eight decades has housed jail inmates, the poor, the infirm, elderly and, more recently, Whatcom County Planning and Public Works department employees.
But now, with the hiring of consultants to study departmental space needs and potential uses for the building and the 130 acres around it, the structure’s future may be in doubt. Some county officials say the building is obsolete.
That has at least one County Council member riled up.
“That building is a landmark. Period. It’s not even a maybe,” said Barbara Brenner, who worked there in the ’80s when it was the county-run Nor-Bell Nursing Home. “It is historic. Historic means that it has a lot of the history of Whatcom County. I can’t think of another building that has as much of (that) history.”
Records of the early years are sparse, but a 1948 book by Chris Siegel, “Early History of Ferndale and Ten Mile Townships,” stated that in 1879 a man named Brown stabbed landowner Peter Galiger to death for “paying considerable attention” to Brown’s attractive wife. The property reverted to the county, which created the County Poor Farm for the poor, criminals and the sick. The current structure was erected in 1926 or 1927 as a hospital. In 1963, it became a nursing home. In 1993, 89 county planning, building and engineering employees moved in.
Today, the departments are outgrowing their home, county Facilities Manager Mike Russell said. Last month, the County Council approved a $286,000 contract with Stewart+King Architects to develop a master plan for that property. That plan, which will take about a year to finish, will study the property and detail departments’ space needs. The study will explore the site’s historical value, he said.
“You’re talking about a building that was designed to have hospital rooms,” he said. “It may be that to restore the building to a useful building will cost the taxpayers more than what the historical value is.”
County Council member Sam Crawford said he supports demolishing the building, because the county can dump money only for so long into a building that’s beyond its useful life. Renovation would require more compromise than a new building, he said.
“I don’t put much, if any, value in the historical or aesthetic use of that, as far as having value for the people of Whatcom County,” he said. “I have always personally envisioned that that building wouldn’t be around forever.”
Costs were high to convert the building from a nursing home to offices in the ’90s, said Terry Unger, who served as nursing home administrator in the late ’80s and again in the early ’90s. But there was also concern about throwing away a historic building, he said.
“It was extremely difficult to remodel and bring it up to a full-blown office building of any value,” he said. Still, “there’s going to be some community resistance to just demolishing the building.”
One of those opposed is Jeff Jewell, a historian at the Whatcom Museum of History & Art.
“It has such a long and colorful history, really,” said Jewell, although much of that history is unknown. “I’m putting my vote down for keeping the building.”
SITE HAS VARIED PAST
The 80-plus-year-old building at the corner of Smith Road and Northwest Drive started as the County Poor Farm and later became an infirmary and nursing home. It’s now used as county offices.
Whatcom County has hired consultants to create a plan for the 130 acres there, the first step toward what could be demolition of the building.
Here’s a brief look at its history, compiled from books, county records and Bellingham Herald archives:
1879: Landowner Peter Galiger is stabbed to death with a butcher knife by a man named Brown, who killed him because he was flirting with Brown’s attractive wife, according to a 1948 book by Chris Siegel, “Early History of Ferndale and Ten Mile Townships.” The property eventually reverts to Whatcom County because Galiger had no heirs. The county uses it as a farm. Galiger is buried in front of the hospital on site, with a picket fence around his grave. After years, the fence rotted and fell away, and his grave now is lost.
1917: The property is used as the County Poor Farm, where the poor live by farming and raising animals. It’s also where petty criminals serve sentences. Two federal prisoners, bootleggers, were sentenced to serve at the County Poor Farm, wroteHazel Husfloen, in her 1984 article in the book “Gems from the Past.”Prisoner Fred Billingsly was sentenced to 60 days and his brother to 30 days. One day in 1917 Fred was released. He went to the bank, withdrew $50,000 in onedollar bills and was never heard from again.
1926 or 1927: The current building was constructed at 5280 Northwest Drive and used as a hospital.
1963: The county turned what was then called the Whatcom County Infirmary into a nursing home.
1988: A June 6 Herald article states the nursing home was fined $12,000 by the state for deficiencies in patient care. At the time, it is the last county-owned nursing home in the state. The home has 59 residents, 47 of whom are supported by federal Medicare payments. A Sept. 29 Herald article says Whatcom County will ask for bids to sell its Nor-Bell Nursing Home.
1990: A Nov. 2 Herald article states that Regency Care Group, which took over control of the nursing home, plans to build a new building and vacate the site by fall 1991. The county, needing the space, didn’t plan to demolish the building.
1993: Renovations are completed and, in the spring, a total of 89 county employees from the planning, building and engineering departments move offices into the building. The arrangement is supposed to be temporary.'
2008: County Council votes to approve a $286,000 contract with Stewart+King Architects to create a master plan for the county’s property at Smith and Northwest. The plan, which will take about a year to finish, will examine departments’ space needs and study the potential for building on the property. After the master plan, county officials would then start designing new facilities. Some officials express doubts about saving the building.
-- THE BELLINGHAM HERALD
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