Mount Rainier is turning a 114-year-old building next to City Hall into a community center.
Located at 3405 Rhode Island Ave., next to the city library, Star-Potts Hall was the site of some of the city’s first council meetings and long a community meeting place.
The $6 million project will build a long glass canopy linking the building with City Hall next door and add an audiovisual room, multipurpose area and potential retail space on the first floor.
The building was built in 1909 by Robert E. Potts, a local widower who had not previously been involved in real estate. He marketed it as “the largest place of meeting in Mount Rainier.”
Over the years, it was home to a movie theater; a pool hall; a duckpin bowling alley; Baptist, Methodist and Episcopalian church services; a local women’s group; a Masonic lodge; and a luncheonette called the Terminal Snack Bar, among other things.
It was also the site of some of the city’s biggest public meetings, including a hearing on the high-profile murder of Robert Laupp, proprietor of the Ram’s Horn Inn, in 1910, and a city council meeting in 1911 that was so heated the mayor came armed with a pistol.
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