Kateryna Savienkova
Deputy Editor
After two years of fighting, Parkland School was saved… almost.
In May of 2024, the deal between PLU and Parkland Community Assn. (PCA) was finalized: PLU took a $750,000 down payment for the building instead of selling it to a construction company to be torn down. For First VP of PCA, Julie Collison, it was both a cause for celebration and a bit of a surprise: “We kind of didn’t learn about it until after the fact.”
Collison, together with a team of devoted volunteers from the Parkland community, has been doing everything possible to keep the donations coming in before and after the initial payment. There are monthly payments as well as a $990,000 payment due in ten months. To keep the fundraising momentum going, Parkland Community Center (PCC), which has been partially open since Fall 2024, has held several fundraising events such as Community Showcase, Soft Open Houses, School Haunted House, and three rummage sales.
The vision is for the building to become a fully functioning community center; however, “it’s not running as an official community center yet in the sense that it’s not open all the time,” shared Collison. The building with multiple offices and conference rooms is also open for rent: Family Promise and Dads MOVE are two long-term renters at PCC right now. All the money from fundraising and rent goes towards the common goal of covering the payments.
The last event organized by PCA, a three-day rummage sale in September, was a success. “We had almost 50 people lined up at the door,” recalls Collison. The ground floor of the old Parkland School was filled with furniture, clothes, kitchenware, books, crafts, and everything in between. They were able to collect over $6000 by selling all those things donated by the community members. The average prices for small-sized items did not go above five dollars. Collision shared that she wouldn’t even charge that much, but she had to remember that the association needs the money for the upcoming payments.
Parkland Community Assn. is working non-stop to keep up the building and the payments. Collison shared that she feels “a certain connectedness to this building,” and wants “to see kids running in and out of it.” She is hopeful about PCC’s future and says that “it sounds like [PLU] wants to work with us.” With clothing swaps, markets, and rummage sales, PLU students and the Parkland Community Center can benefit from each other. It’s only a matter of putting PCC’s events from their website on your calendar.
