By ANNELI FOGT

Editor

Islanders will have improved athletic facilities in the forms of new indoor batting cages and a completed boathouse at Jensen Point thanks to two grants awarded by King County to the Vashon Island Rowing Club and Vashon High School.

After many months of both places attempting to find funds to complete the projects, both are finally possible and should be completed next year with the funds from two separate grants totaling $135,000: $75,000 for the high school and $60,000 for the rowing club. The grants are provided by the county’s Parks and Recreation Department as part of the Youth Sports Facilities Grant fund program.

The grants are matching grants, meaning the awarded money must be matched by local community organizations and the receiving agency, but county spokesman Doug Williams said those matching donations were required to be secured by grant receivers at the time grant applications were filed. Williams said the grant receivers do not have to have “all funding in-hand” at the time of the award, but “need to show that they have firm commitments for their portion of a project’s funding needs.”

The match requirement does not have to be cash donations and can include donated time, materials or services, Williams said.

VHS Athletic Director Andy Sears and Vashon Island Rowing Club President Colby Atwood both said that they are confident about the projects and expect to have them completed by the end of 2016.

The high school has been planning to build indoor batting cages since the old facilities in the IGA shopping center were taken over by Granny’s Attic when it moved to the space early this year. For the past 10 months, the school has been renting a portion of the old Mukai property just outside town to use as batting cages for the high school and the Vashon Youth Baseball and Softball community teams, but parents of athletes say the Mukai property cages are not cutting it.

“It’s one step better than not having cages at all,” Vashon resident Cheryl Pruett said.

She said the current cages are dimly lit, cold and inconvenient for most students who are not of driving age. The new cages will be built on the VHS campus, north of the softball field, which Pruett says is in a more accessible location for all of the community.

Sears said he is excited about the new cages and hopes they will be done and ready for VHS sports teams and VYBS community youth teams to use by late next year.

“Weather-permitting, we’re hoping to have the site work done now and then have the cages in the fall for the following winter,” Sears said. “I’m so excited. With the inclement weather in the spring, it’ll be a huge advantage to be able to practice year-round.”

Meanwhile, down at Jensen Point, the Vashon Island Rowing Club has been trying to deal with a boathouse that is too small for its needs and was left incomplete. The current house, built in 2000, was supposed to be 50 percent larger than it currently is, but the size would have required an expensive fire sprinkler system.

“If you go down there and look, the left-hand portion of the building is not there,” Atwood said. “It was intended to be fully enclosed, but going through the permitting process, we found out we needed a sprinkler system. There is not enough water on the Burton Peninsula to support a sprinkler, and it would have been an expensive addition.”

The building was only built up to the point where a sprinkler would not be necessary, and the club has been dealing with the smaller-than-expected house since then. Atwood also said that the roof and floor planks in the unenclosed area of the house have begun to rot because of the moisture.

“Now there is a new fire marshal in town, and he looked at the plans and said we don’t need a sprinkler system, just a monitored fire alarm,” Atwood said. “So we are going to complete the boathouse and enclose that area and replace the beams.”

He said the grant provides $60,000 of the estimated $90,000 project. Thanks to community events and donors, the club has secured nearly all of the funding needed to complete the project and match the grant: $18,000 came from Passport to Pain; a private donor gave $5,000, and another $7,000 came from fundraising. He said that because the park district has no money, the club also agreed to pay for the share of the project that the park district would usually cover for owning the building. Regardless, he said the club’s funding picture has “improved dramatically.”

“We filed for a building permit, and, if all goes well, we should have that by January,” Atwood said. “We’re getting bids from contractors, and once those come back, it should go pretty quickly.”

He said the boathouse should be ready by spring 2016.

Meanwhile, the club will buy more boats for its popular junior rowing program, build boat racks to store the boats and replace the house’s plywood floor with concrete.