Mount Rainier’s $6 Million Historic Community Center Now Open

Mount Rainier officially opened its new community center in a renovated 117-year-old building this week.

Located at 3405 Rhode Island Ave., next to the city library, the Potts Hall Welcome Center connects the historic community building to City Hall next door with a long glass canopy.

The $6 million project includes an audiovisual room, multipurpose area and potential retail space on the first floor as well as a new high-tech city council chamber.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held Wednesday after two years of construction finished in December.

The original 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.”

Potts Hall

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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