Just in (this is the project we toured recently):

Contributions of $250,000 from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation and
$150,000 from Safeco capped a two-year $13 million campaign by Neighborhood
House to build a LEED Gold-certified neighborhood center in West Seattle’s
High Point community. The closing major gifts that brought the campaign to
its goal were announced today at a fundraising event for the nonprofit
organization.

The High Point Neighborhood Center will be an environmental learning center
in addition to housing social services and programs for low-income
individuals and families. Among its green features are 256 solar panels that
will cover 6,000 square feet of the building’s roof – the largest array of
solar panels in the state. The solar panels will light up Head Start and
English-language classrooms, heat a Family and Teen Center, fuel a community
kitchen, and save thousands of dollars a year – freeing up critical funds
that will go to services and programs instead of electrical bills.

“The biggest solar array in the state is not on a rich person’s house, but
on a community center for the people – everyday people,” Van Jones, White
House Council on Environmental Quality, told Neighborhood House supporters
last year. “This is an extraordinary, bold, breakout move that changes the
agenda for the country.”

The campaign’s final fundraising push will seek to raise an additional
$100,000 to purchase a second solar panel array that will then be expected
to power 100 percent of the building’s energy needs, making it one of the
very few energy-neutral structures in the state.

Neighborhood House officially kicks off the final solar panel fundraising
effort on the longest day of the year – the summer solstice on June 21.