110 year-old Granger building to be demolished

GRANGER -- After dominating this community's landscape for more than a century, the KDNA building will come down today.

In its 110 years, the building has served as a hotel, school and, for the last three decades, home to the state's only Spanish-language public radio station.

If all goes according to schedule, crews will begin demolishing the two-story red brick building sometime about 7 o'clock this morning.

Sentimental treasure hunters have already grabbed their favorite relics: a bannister, pieces of molding, a door frame.

"It's sad, because we used to have such good times there," said Jean Mohr, a former student at a Seventh-Day Adventist school that was housed in the building. "But you know that's progress, I guess."

The building was constructed as the Highline Hotel in 1898 when the town was striving to become the center of an infant agricultural region. But it has been crumbling in recent years.

Employees at the radio station that occupied it the past 27 years even roped off a section of the lobby for fear some of the ceiling would collapse.

The station, which has been broadcasting from its new home across the street for about a week, didn't completely finishing moving in until Monday.

Station officials explored the idea of preserving the building, but it doesn't qualify for the National Historic Register because it has been altered. In 1945, Adventist church leaders removed the third floor because, even back then, it had stability problems.

But some people are saving portions of the landmark at 121 Sunnyside Ave.

Station manager Gabriel Martinez plans to make a desk ornament out of two bricks, one from the old building and one from the new, $3.2 million station and community center.

On Monday, city workers took down a decorative metal frame from the front door, hoping to use it as ... something. They haven't decided what yet, said Nancy Mortensen, a city spokeswoman.

Last week, alumni of the Seventh-Day Adventist Academy, which occupied the building from 1922 to 1945, removed the bannister that lined the staircase leading from the lobby to the second floor.

They plan to mount it in the academy's current location in Spangle, south of Spokane, where it was opened to replace the Granger school, said Linnea Torkelsen, alumni development director for Upper Columbia Academy. They also plan to use some of the wood to make engraved pens for alumni.

"I am interested in things that remind us of the past and tie us to the present," Torkelsen said.

Wayne and Barbara Thompson, both alumni of the Adventist school and members of the church now right across the street, plan to make shelves out of the building's door casings and crown molding.

"There's a lot of sentimental connection," said Barbara Thompson, 70.

The building functioned as a hotel for about 20 years. In 1920, Northwest Adventist churches bought it to start a boarding academy for high schoolers, according to the book "Granger: The Town, the Land, The People." They used the third floor as a dormitory.

In 1945, church leaders moved the academy to Spangle and removed the third floor. However, the church continued to use the building as a day-time elementary and middle school until 1972.

Mohr started as a fifth-grader in 1945. She remembers classes on the first floor and her teachers living in apartments on the second floor. She also recalls the school's community gathering place for dances, roller skating parties and talent shows inside a gymnasium, located where the new KDNA building now stands.

In 2006, the Granger Seventh-Day Adventist Church held a centennial anniversary. Many alumni attended and took tours of their former school.

Radio KDNA, which bills itself as "La Voz del Campesino," or the Voice of the Farm Worker, began broadcasting from the building in 1979 at 91.9 FM. It offers kids' programming, news and music, and recently added jazz and hip-hop programs in English. The farm workers to whom it aims its messages contributed money -- sometimes in increments of $1 bills -- to the new station.

DJ Ezequiel Mendoza does not plan to claim any relics, but he has dusted off a few old songs in memory of the old building. One of them is "Ríos de Babilonia," the very first tune he played to kick off the station's very first broadcast at noon on Dec. 19, 1979.

"There's lots of memories, we're like a family you know," said Mendoza, 61. "But time is passing."

The building through the years

* 1898: Highline Hotel is built by Olof Olson, a railroad construction tycoon who lived in Maple Valley, Wash.

* 1909: Granger is incorporated

* 1920: Northwest Seventh-Day Adventist churches purchase the building and begin using it as a school, including a boarding academy.

* 1945: The churches move the academy portion of the school to an area near Spokane and remove the third story because of an unstable roof. They continue to use it as a daytime-only school for students in grades 1-10.

* 1972: The churches move the day school to Wapato

* 1973: The empty hotel is purchased by Northwest Rural Opportunities, a statewide private social services agency geared to farm workers

* 1977: The organization turns over the building to the Northwest Chicano Radio Network, which begins training farm workers in radio broadcasting in three upstairs studios

* Dec. 19, 1979: Radio KDNA holds its first broadcast

* May 18, 1980: Mount St. Helens erupts, giving the fledgling station its first big news story to cover

* 2005: KDNA leaders begin raising money for a new station and community center

* Monday: KDNA completes its move into its new building

* Today: The former hotel/school/radio station is scheduled to be demolished

* Ross Courtney can be reached at 930-8798 or rcourtney@yakimaherald.com.

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