Rock Ledge retains some free space at center

       The move of the Westside CARES emergency-food pantry to the Westside Community Center last week has had a ripple effect on the Rock Ledge Ranch Historic Site.
       The Rock Ledge volunteer friends group, called the Living History Association (LHA), had been holding its meetings and storing the ranch's period clothing in a 700- square-foot room at the community center since last August, under a rent-free agreement with City Parks, which owns both the center and the ranch. However, the ground-floor location was ideal for the pantry, based on plans by the limited liability corporation (LLC) of Woodmen Valley Chapel, which is now running the center under a recently finalized agreement with City Parks.
       To make space for the pantry, LLC Director Dick Siever relocated the LHA to a 300-square-foot room in the basement. As he's explained it, the LLC is trying to accommodate key Westside groups while still making the center pay for itself.
       The basement move will allow the LHA office - which until August had been in LHA President Ron Wright's house - to remain at the center, still rent-free. “It isn't as nice a space, but the price is right,” Wright commented. “It will be a nice little office.”
       However, the reduced space meant having to return the period clothing (well over 100 pieces on a dozen racks) to the ranch. Space became available there this month in the Studio building (originally used by workmen in construction of the early-1900s Orchard House) after a long-time City Parks-subsidized preschool had to be closed because of city funding issues.
       The ranch's master plan calls for the Studio to be used for historic purposes, including a curatorial (museum-type) area, Wright said. So the clothes will take up half of the roughly 500 square feet, and a curatorial area will take up the other half - once the LHA is set up for that, he said.
       Rock Ledge Ranch's period clothes, which are worn by volunteer docents to add to the historic experience of people visiting the ranch, had been stored in a room on the third floor of the Orchard House for many years, but had to be relocated in August after the room was restored for inclusion on guided house tours.

Westside Pioneer article