COWICHE, Wash. – As he moves from room to room, the Rev. Robert Siler, chief of staff of the Catholic Diocese of Yakima, makes sure to flip the switches.

“Since I have to pay the bills, we’ll make sure to turn off the lights,” he says, pausing to hit one last lever.

Every bit helps.

The St. Peter Church and Retreat Center, part of which is housed in the old Cowiche Central School, is losing money.

The number of retreats has dropped off in the past decade – particularly the past five years – leaving diocesan officials wondering what to do with the 17.5-acre campus, a cornerstone of the Cowiche community.

They’ve already notified coordinators of Reach Youth Ministry – the evangelistic, Catholic, traveling retreat program that’s headquartered at the center – that the fate of the 1911 stone school building at 15880 Summitview Road is being studied.

Options include mothballing the building and discontinuing its use as a retreat center, selling it or demolishing it.

The demolition idea distresses many former students, men and women in their 70s, 80s and 90s, many of whom still live in the area and have fond memories of the place.

“I think it would be a shame if they tore it down,” says 85-year-old Etta Mae White, who attended first through seventh grades at the old Cowiche school. “It’s been there forever for so many of us.”

Financially, though, it’s “far from breaking even,” Siler says.

“I can say consistently it has cost about $100,000 more to operate than it brings in” per year.

Annually, Siler estimates “under a dozen retreats” are held at the retreat center: “It’s probably 25 percent of what it might have been 25 years ago.”

So by the end of the month, the diocese expects to form a committee to study the fate of the center, in particular the 97-year-old school building with its signature fire escape slide leading from the top-floor auditorium to the ground.

The group could have a recommendation by the end of the year.

“Ultimately, it’s the bishop’s decision,” Siler says. “But he’ll listen very carefully to what the committee recommends.”

Meantime, Reach Youth Ministry is looking for new accommodations.

“We have a lot of people praying for us,” says Dan Bartleson, executive director of the nonprofit that trains teams of young adults, then sends them across the country and into Canada to lead retreats for teens and youths.

This year’s group is scheduled to begin training Aug. 24. By October, Bartleson says he’s hoping to secure a new location. Reach Youth Ministry, started about 30 years ago, has used the center as its home base for a dozen years.

“For us, the building is familiar, and it feels like home,” Bartleson says. “But we know from living here that it’s a burden on the diocese. We’ve watched the use decline over the last five or six years.

“We’re trying to be realistic about it, but there’s some emotional stuff going on,” he says. “It’s been our home for a long time.”

The three-story school, which once housed grades one through 12, is also a local landmark in rural Cowiche.

“Whenever I’m having someone come out from town, I tell them to look for that,” says 84-year-old Doris Adams, who has lived here all her life – except for four years during World War II – and attended the old Cowiche school, graduating in 1941.

Back then, the lower grades were taught in the basement, the main floor housed the middle grades, and high school classes were upstairs.

The last class graduated in 1944, the year Cowiche and Tieton schools consolidated. But the building continued to be used as a high school until the new Highland High School was completed at its current location farther down Summitview.

“The people of the community that grew up in my era, we’ve watched one school after another be destroyed. They’re almost all gone now,” says 78-year-old Barbara Barnes of Tieton.

As a girl, she attended the old Tieton school, made from the same local stone as the old Cowiche school. The Tieton school no longer exists.

Unlike the Mabton school, also built in 1911 – and still standing – the Cowiche school isn’t listed on the National Historic Register.

It stood vacant for several years before the diocese acquired it in 1958. St. Peter the Apostle Parish started the following year, and the old school became the parish center. In 1962, the diocese established St. Peter the Apostle Seminary in the same building.

Soon, it added to the campus, building new dormitories, offices and a gym that now serves as the sanctuary of Saint Juan Diego Church. Dedicated in 2003, the church was created after the congregation outgrew the St. Peter chapel, housed in an addition to the old school building.

The seminary was short-lived, closing in 1968 due to low enrollment. Since then, the diocese and local parish have used the campus for a variety of religious education classes and retreats, including Search, an interactive student-led program filled with talks, small-group discussions and group activities to encourage young people to look at their relationship with others and God.

“I hate to hear that they would even consider tearing it down. I’m not a bit in favor of that at all,” says 87-year-old Clarice Walter Grove of Grandview.

Her husband Irl’s grandfather, Robert P. Rockett, was the janitor of the Cowiche school in its early days. She went to school there from 1928 to 1938, leaving as a sophomore when her family moved to the Lower Valley.

“Do they still have that old fire escape?” she asks, recalling sliding down the chute with chums. “We would get a piece of bread wrapping – you know, wax paper – and kind of slick up the seat so you’d slide faster and better. We weren’t supposed to go down it. But we did.”

Siler, too, has slid down the fire escape, which – to answer Grove’s question – remains. These days, though, its launch platform is covered with graffiti.

“It’s a historic landmark,” 75-year-old Curtis Strausz, a retired fruit grower in Cowiche, says of the school. He went there from first through fifth grades and his freshman and sophomore years of high school.

And – like Groves, White and Barnes – he wants to preserve the vintage building with its hardwood floors and high ceilings.

“Why would you save the Larson Building? Why would you save the church building that became the performing arts center there in Yakima? It’s in the category,” he says. “I think if everybody puts their heads together, we can come up with a decent use for it.”

The art-deco Larson Building, completed in 1931 in downtown Yakima, houses a couple of wineries, a barbershop and offices. The Italian Renaissance-style Church of Christ, Scientist was built in 1917 on the corner of Naches Avenue and A Street in downtown Yakima. Three years ago, local builders – brothers Steve and Pat Strosahl – transformed the sanctuary into a performing arts center.

For the old Cowiche school, Barnes suggests transitional housing or a homeless shelter.

White has a different idea: “Look what they’ve done in Tieton to the warehouse up there,” she says, referring to Mighty Tieton, a revitalization project under way about three miles northwest of Cowiche.

Two successful Seattle businessmen – Ed Marquand, an art book publisher, and Michael Longyear, a lawyer – are in the process of transforming the tiny town into an artisan’s haven with new loft condominiums, a letterpress print shop and artist studios, among other features.

Siler admits Mighty Tieton has come to mind when considering what to do with the old Cowiche school.

“If somebody wanted to donate a million dollars to renovate the building. …” he says, his voice trailing off.

Meantime, the diocese is moving forward with plans to study the situation.

“I don’t see us having the resources to transform it into a modern retreat facility,” Siler says. Still, “people shouldn’t expect a wrecking ball out there anytime soon.”

‘It’s been there forever for so many of us.’