A face-lift for Yesler Terrace's Head Start building

For seven hours on Saturday, about 150 volunteers pruned overgrown hedges, planted new landscaping, installed gutters, painted peeling railings and put together new play equipment.

They helped replace old lighting fixtures, renovated a kitchen and turned an extra bathroom into a utility room. And when they were all done, the building that houses Yesler Terrace's Head Start program for preschoolers had a freshness it had lacked for decades.

"I'm a little overwhelmed," said Shelley Seely, one of the Head Start teachers, as she took a tour of the renovation, peeking into rooms made brighter by new lights and a kitchen with new floors and countertops. "It's really great," she said.

The Head Start building, behind the Yesler Community Center, was built in the 1930s and only renovated once since then, in the 1970s. Before the face-lift, the classrooms were dim and poorly heated; the playground had no play equipment, and the kitchen was in need of new dishwashers and a new floor.

The free program serves 40 preschoolers from ages 3 to 5. More than half the students are the children of Somali refugees, who are here legally, and all of the families live in Yesler Terrace, a subsidized housing project run by the city of Seattle. On average, Yesler Terrace residents earn less than 30 percent of the city's median income.

Planning for the renovation began in January, when a group of volunteers got together to figure out how they could help the program by brightening up its building. The group raised $70,000 in cash and in-kind contributions, said Robert Blakey, the senior manager for operations for Group Health Cooperative and a member of the Washington State Society for Healthcare Engineering.

Blakey was able to persuade visiting members of the American Society for Healthcare Engineering, in Seattle for the society's national convention, to join local volunteers on the project.

The project's other partners were Swedish Medical Center and Seattle University. The university recently started a youth initiative to help connect students living in the neighborhood to the resources they need to get a college education.

Sherry Williams, community-affairs director at Swedish Medical Center, pointed to some of the improvements: The playground now has a climbing dome, a slide, monkey bars and an area where students can play with sand and water. The roof over a portion of the playground, which protects children from the weather in rainy months, has gotten new skylights; the old ones were broken.

"This was important for the teachers — to have more play area for active, purposeful play," Williams said.

The volunteers installed gutters to keep rain from blowing in to the front door, landscaped the outside and, with the assistance of electricians, replaced classroom lighting. Volunteers also replaced the kitchen floor and assisted skilled workers who added electrical outlets and improved the heating system.

"When a teacher comes through and sees all these people care about the program, it makes a world of difference," said Tony Kuo, facilities manager for Neighborhood House, a multi-service agency that has served the Yesler Terrace community since the 1950s and runs the Head Start program.

Katherine Long: 206-464-2219 or klong@seattletimes.com