QuickTake:

Shelton McMurphey Johnson House in Eugene and the McKenzie River Discovery Center are two Lane County projects that have been recommended for grants.

If state legislators in Salem approve, Lane County could receive $2.4 million in arts funding across two capital construction projects. 

That includes the historic Victorian home and museum, the Shelton McMurphey Johnson House in Eugene, which has been fundraising for a planned garden terrace for more than a decade, and the McKenzie River Discovery Center, a Walterville nonprofit hoping to build an educational center highlighting the river’s culture and history.

Last week, the Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon, a statewide arts lobbying group, released its list of 11 capital projects for nonprofit cultural organizations it has endorsed for public funding in the Oregon Legislature’s 2027-29 biennial state budget.

The Shelton McMurphey Johnson House is recommended to receive $400,000 in state funding for the project. The McKenzie River Discovery Center could receive $2 million to fund the construction.

The funding isn’t guaranteed at this point. It’s a strong recommendation for how the Legislature should dole out its Cultural Resources Economic Funds, which are commonly referred to by the acronym CREF and distributed on a two-year basis.

Here’s a look at the two projects. 

An educational center on the McKenzie

The vision for the McKenzie River Discovery Center, nonprofit president Gene Jones said, is to create an educational destination to share the cultural and geological heritage of the McKenzie River valley.

The vision is to have museum exhibits touching on the river’s unique characteristics as an aquifer-fed river “that will never run dry,” Jones said, the fish species that make their home in the McKenzie watershed, and Native American and pioneer history on the river.

A nonprofit could receive $2 million in state funding to construct a new McKenzie River Discovery Center as an educational destination about the river’s geology, cultural history and wildlife. Credit: Ashli Blow / Lookout Eugene-Springfield

“We’re trying to develop a generation of river stewards, people who can understand the value of the resource, and make sure we preserve that,” Jones said.

The project has been in the making for about 10 years, Jones said. Phase one of the discovery center is complete, he added, with more than $4 million for the renovation of an Old McKenzie Fish Hatchery building.

The additional $2 million would allow the nonprofit to complete renovating former hatchery buildings for the center, pay for interactive exhibits for the space developed by Portland’s Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, and serve as funding for future capital campaigns.

The Holiday Farm Fire in 2020 destroyed a large maintenance barn on the former hatchery grounds, which Jones said the center is also hoping to rebuild as an exhibit space. 

The grant would be transformative for the nonprofit, which is run by a team of unpaid volunteers. But Jones knows the Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon’s endorsement does not guarantee the $2 million.

“It’s not money in the bank,” Jones said. 

The project is tied for the single largest amount of endorsed funding in this CREF cycle. A building renovation for the Britt Gardens Music and Arts Festival in Jacksonville also was recommended for $2 million. 

Shelton McMurphey Johnson House garden terrace

Eugene’s Victorian house on Skinner Butte is many things: history-laden, intricate and ornate in its furnishings. But it isn’t very large, outgoing executive director Leah Murray said, fitting only about 50 people onsite for any given event.

“It’s a beautiful building, but there’s four tiny rooms that kind of lead into each other,” she said. “There’s no big space, and we turn away a tremendous amount of opportunities.”

The CREF-endorsed garden terrace project, which the board of the Shelton McMurphey Johnson House started exploring as an option in 2015 and began fundraising for in earnest in 2022, could quintuple that capacity.

The planned 5,400-square-foot deck would accommodate up to 250 people in a cedar grove adjacent to the house, with views of the city. That would open the nonprofit up for things like weddings, large groups or Chamber of Commerce events.

The Shelton McMurphey Johnson House is preparing for a renovation that includes a garden terrace. Credit: Brooke Taché / Lookout Eugene-Springfield

The terrace, with plans developed by landscape architecture firm Cameron McCarthy and fundraising assisted by Christina Lund of Lund Development Solutions, is estimated to cost $838,000.

The fundraising so far is at around $250,000, including a $150,000 gift from the Jacqueline Laraway Giustina Fund of the Oregon Community Foundation. The project is recommended to receive $400,000 in state funding, which would leave them with $188,000 still to raise.

Murray said that some private donors have indicated they would be willing to step in when the project was two-thirds of the way to full funding, to make it a sure thing. 

She pointed out that it’s the only Eugene-based project endorsed for funding, which could help garner approval from a Legislature looking to spread the arts-funding wealth.

“We’re really lucky that this year we were the only project that applied for our area, and it’s important to that program to have projects around the state,” she said. “We’re thrilled to be able to represent Eugene in Lane County.”

Annie Aguiar is the Arts and Culture Correspondent. She has reported arts news and features for national and local newsrooms, including at the Seattle Times, the Washington Post and most recently as a reporting fellow for the New York Times’ Culture desk covering arts and entertainment.