By Jacob Dimond
jake@yelmonline.com
The City of Yelm is moving forward with plans to honor area veterans with the addition of a memorial park on Mill Road.
Yelm’s Public Works Director Cody Colt said the grant-funded project would cost between $3 and $3.5 million, with a goal to start construction in 2026.
Colt said if the project is funded, city officials would aim for design plans to be completed in 2025. The city previously purchased a property and pond on Mill Road with plans to develop the veterans memorial there if it can secure grant funds.
“What we’ve been doing over the last couple of months is flushing out the concept of what we want to look at. This is a concept,” Colt said. “All we’re going to use this for is to go out and get money, get the backing behind this to start developing out the concept and actually go into design and construction.”
Included in the concept is a Mill Road realignment, which features an added turn lane to the road. The memorial itself would include 40 parking spots, which can be adjusted if more are needed, along with an unloading area for older or disabled individuals needing direct pathway access.
“One thing I wanted to do ahead of time, I wanted a memorial entryway. So when you walk in, there’s every branch of service, all six branches,” Colt said. “We added the Space Force because obviously at some point you’re going to have a need for recognition of the Space Force and some of their accomplishments, so we wanted to get ahead of the game and put the Space Force here.”
Colt added that each of the six branches would include a pillar featuring the history of each branch, when it was created and why. The back end of each pillar, facing state Route 507, would be highlighted with granite statues with the branch logo lit up facing the road. A restroom area would also be included at the new veterans memorial.
“I think this needs to have a restroom because when we have memorial events, veterans events here, there’s a lot of people here that need a restroom and will be here for two or three hours,” Colt said. “This is a spot that I’d really recommend doing a restroom versus some of the sites we’ve chosen not to do one in the past.”
Colt also highlighted a reflection walk, which would honor and highlight the Korean and Vietnam wars, the Gulf and Iraq wars, Afghanistan and Iraq wars, World War I and World War II and smaller conflicts, respectively.
“One thing that I never see is the smaller conflicts,” Colt said. “There’s a lot of conflicts that happen that aren’t wars, and people pass during them and aren’t recognized. You have conflicts of Herzegovina, Bosnia, Grenada. Those things happened. People served and died in them. No one pays as much attention as they’re not actual wars.”
Each war and conflict would feature three pillars, with the center pillar providing a description of the war, how the United States became involved and more. The pillars on the left and right would honor local veterans, prisoners of war missing in action and those killed in action who served in each specific war. Colt said he would like to make half the memorial a marble wall and the other half granite.
“... I think one of the things about this is it’s something we don’t want to skimp on as a city,” Colt said, adding the price tag could be between $3 million and $3.5 million, including road realignment. “The goal is to get this all grant funded. Me and my team, over the next four to five months, will be finding every dollar we can to pay for this.
“It’s a very easy thing to get people to back up on all levels of legislature and everything. I think that’s beneficial,” Colt added. “There’s a lot of people passionate about this, even in our local community. I think it’s going to be easier to find money, even though there’s less pods of money to pull from.”
Mayor Joe DePinto stressed that the project would be entirely funded by grants.
“If we can’t find grant funding, we probably won’t be able to move forward with this project,” DePinto said. “It’s too big of a price tag to handle out of our general budget, but like Cody said, I think we’ll be able to get grant funding for it, and I think it’s a worthwhile project to do so.”
