Building 410 at Vancouver Barracks is anonymous from the roadside. Beige walls surround a crumbling parking lot, which hosts the occasional bike skills day camp.
But Tracy Fortmann, superintendent of the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, wants to give the former Civilian Conservation Corps auto repair shop building new life — as a multicultural center.
“I like to say for thousands of years this land has beckoned people to its shores. There’s amazing cultural diversity coming here, living here, and many of them raising their families,” Fortmann said. “So it seemed like a natural consideration that perhaps (we need) a cultural center which celebrates and connects this rich heritage and reflects what our community is today.”
The interest, she says, is definitely there. The question is whether Building 410 would be a suitable home for a cultural center at the fort, which has been used as a British trading post, a U.S. military installation and more. Building 410 fronts Fifth Street and is near the reconstructed fur trading post stockade.
“(The building) is a clear crossroads through time, and readily allows for all these different groups to connect,” Fortmann said. “At this point it’s really just trying to start envisioning if this is something that resonates, something that connects with those groups that has such a long history with the place.”
The park service hosted an open house Thursday to discover just that.
Fortmann said everyone in attendance — somewhere between 50 and 100 people — was enthusiastic about the possibilities for a multicultural center.
“The response was almost electric with some people,” she said.
Fortmann added that she thinks the event was successful in bringing together different facets of the community to discuss the possibilities. It’s also part of her mission to ensure the site is inclusive and celebrates the cultures of the past, present and future.
“We don’t want to have visitors think of them in the past tense. Obviously these are vibrant cultures that continue today,” said Tessa Langford, Fort Vancouver curator. “We want to have a message within the park that although we talk about diversity and cultural history of the past, all of these communities are still here.”
One of the small ways the fort is honoring its rich cultural past is with a rotating display of artists in its recently renovated visitor center. In the last two years, five or six artists have exhibited works there.
“It’s a small step in the right direction, but the potential cultural center would be a much bigger opportunity,” Langford said.
Langford added that the park service doesn’t want to make a unilateral decision. The staff wants to hear from the community before forming a solid plan.
“For us, this is a public facility, it is one that we would engage and bring people to,” Fortmann said. “We see there could be a wonderful opportunity for groups to interact — not just about the history but who we are together today and how it could be in the future.”
