Lopez Center for Community & Arts

Set on land donated to the Lopez Island community in 1984, when Natalie Roush gave five acres in Lopez Village toward what would become a shared gathering place, the Lopez Center for Community and the Arts is owned and operated by the nonprofit Lopez Community Center Association, which formed in 1987 to carry the vision forward and, after years of fundraising that gained early momentum from seed funding provided by Andy Holland in 1994, opened the doors of its main facility to the community in October 1999. At the heart of the center is a multipurpose main hall, where a stage, hardwood floors, and a vintage Steinway piano support everything from theater and music productions to meetings, memorials, and fundraisers, while large sliding glass doors open the room to natural light and to the rolling lawn beyond. That lawn, together with a south-facing veranda and an outdoor pavilion built for the center's earliest seasonal concerts, gives weddings held here room to spread from an outdoor ceremony across the grounds into the hall for a reception seated at up to 200 place settings, a scale that has made the center known as the largest wedding venue on Lopez Island. A fully equipped kitchen, included with every rental, and technical packages ranging from a simple microphone and piano setup to full theatrical lighting and a live band system round out what the center can offer, all of it maintained by an all-volunteer Board of Trustees elected annually by the Lopez Island community whose gifts of land and labor built the place.