Construction for Western Washington University’s House of Healing longhouse is set to begin this summer, with an anticipated opening date of summer 2025.
Bellingham City Council approved a ground lease and amended interlocal agreement at its meeting Monday night, April 8, allowing the university to rent 2 acres at the south end of the Sehome Hill Arboretum, for a rental price of $1 a year. The city is also providing Western with $600,000 in transportation funds for offsite pedestrian and street improvements.
The House of Healing will be the first longhouse constructed in the City of Bellingham, according to city documents.
Funding for the project came together more quickly than Western’s Tribal Liaison Laural Ballew expected, she said on Friday, April 5.
“I’m just so excited …” she said. “I never dreamed that this would happen during my tenure here.”
Efforts to get a longhouse on campus began with the Native American Student Union, which asked for one in a 2016 letter to university administration.
The project received $4.5 million from the state with the help of State Rep. Debra Lekanoff, with the remaining coming from the Mount Baker Foundation, Whatcom County WECU and local tribes: Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, Swinomish Tribe, Stillaguamish Tribe, Nooksack Indian Tribe and Tulalip Tribes, said Ballew.
U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen secured an additional $450,000 for interior furnishings and kitchen equipment.
The building will be constructed at the south end of Sehome Hill Arboretum, and will house the tribal liaison’s office, space for the Native American Student Association, study space, kitchen space and more.
While intended to be a space for Indigenous students, staff and faculty, it will also be open to community members.
At the Monday city council meeting, Parks and Recreation Director Nicole Oliver said the project will include “managed parking.”
“Currently, that parking is a free-for-all for students and will be managed as part of the development and will provide parking for both the longhouse and hourly parking,” Oliver said.
Project Director Christopher Mead said in a statement on Tuesday, April 9 that the existing parking along Arboretum Drive will be paved and striped as 26 spots and then divided into 9 permit parking spots and 17 hourly parking spots available off hours for park patrons.
The ground lease allows fires in designated areas for cultural practices and food preparation, and allows for a “Native Educational Food Forest.”
Ballew said food will be an important aspect of the House of Healing, with a kitchen to allow students to gather and prepare food.
The design will maintain some of the ideas of a traditional longhouse, Ballew said, with carved doors and four posts at the entryway, and traditional influence throughout the building.
Ballew said she hopes having a longhouse on campus will help improve Indigenous retention at the university. Seventy-one percent of fall 2022 freshmen who identify as fully or partly native returned in fall 2023. Overall, 79% of freshmen students from fall 2022 returned in fall 2023.
“That’s what I see this building as; It’s going to help to bring those students in,” Ballew said. “They’re going to see it and want to come here.”
On Thursday, April 11, the university will host an invite-only blessing and ground-turning ceremony on the land where the longhouse will be built.
“I know I’m going to be a flood of tears,” Ballew said about the event. “They’re going to have to pick me off the ground, I’m sure.”
This article was updated at 6:08 p.m. on April 9, 2024 to add additional information about parking.
Charlotte Alden is CDN’s general assignment/enterprise reporter; reach her at charlottealden@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 123.
