Republic, Wash., a remote former mining town of roughly 1,000 people in Ferry County, is moving forward with a $16 million civic building that would put a public library, a licensed childcare center, and flexible community gathering space under one roof, next door to the local K-12 school.
The project addresses three shortfalls at once. Ferry County is a federally designated childcare desert, a category meaning there are far too few licensed slots for the families who need them. After the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out many of the fragile in-home providers that rural areas rely on, the gap only widened. The existing Ferry County Library District operates out of cramped quarters. And Republic, the county's only incorporated city, has limited dedicated space for community events.
Placing the roughly 14,000-square-foot building on land adjacent to the school campus is a deliberate choice: it cuts site costs, shares infrastructure, and puts early childhood services steps away from elementary classrooms. The school district is the largest employer in town and already serves as the community's civic anchor.
Source: NationGraph.
For a jurisdiction this small, a $16 million construction project is extraordinary. Republic almost certainly assembled funding from multiple sources, potentially including Washington's Early Learning Facilities grant program, federal USDA rural development funds, pandemic-era recovery dollars, and state capital appropriations. The city has not publicly detailed the full funding stack.
To manage the project without a large in-house engineering staff, Republic is using a Progressive Design-Build approach, a delivery method that Washington expanded to smaller public bodies in 2023. Rather than locking in every design detail before hiring a contractor, the city will bring a design-build team on early to develop the final scope together within the $16 million budget ceiling. The city posted a request for qualifications through the state's OMWBE bid portal, with routing through the Office of Minority and Women's Business Enterprises signaling an equity-in-contracting focus.
If the selection process stays on schedule, the city expects to issue a notice to proceed in September 2026.
