'A great day for us'
The ribbon will be cut on the new Radiation Oncology Center in Moses Lake Saturday.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald
Dirt flies at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Radiation Oncology Center, a joint project by the Columbia Basin Cancer Foundation and the Confluence Health Foundation.
A cancer patient adds a message of encouragement to the walls of the Radiation Oncology Center as part of the Written in Stone project during construction in summer 2023. The facility will be unveiled at an open house Saturday.
MOSES LAKE — After a fundraising campaign that persisted – and was successful – in the teeth of a global pandemic, a new facility to provide radiation treatment for cancer patients in Moses Lake will have its grand opening Saturday. The open house for the Confluence Health Radiation Oncology Center will be from 10 a.m. to noon at 905 E. Hill Ave.
The new treatment center is a joint project of the Columbia Basin Cancer Foundation, Confluence Health and the Confluence Health Foundation. The ceremony will begin at 10:15, and representatives from all three groups will be cutting the ribbon at about 10:30 a.m.
“It means so much to our community,” said foundation director Angel Ledesma at the groundbreaking ceremony in August 2022.
Once the ribbon is cut, people will be invited to tour the facility.
It’s the realization of a goal set in 2018, when the cancer foundation started raising $3.5 million for their part of the project. The total project cost was about $14.5 million. That was more than double the original estimate of about $7 million.
Cancer Foundation members worked on fundraising throughout 2019, and didn’t stop when the COVID-19 pandemic hit – and kept going, and going. Even as the foundation was forced to cancel fundraisers and people had other things on their minds, the donations continued to come in. The Cancer Foundation reached its goal in July 2021.
“It’s such an awesome thing that this community helped us,” Ledesma said in 2021.
In the meantime, inflation had a substantial impact on the cost of construction, and the money committed by the Confluence Health Foundation and its sister organization, the Wenatchee Valley Medical Group, was no longer enough.
“It’s a crazy time in the world to bring this together,” said Dr. Andrew Jones, Confluence Health chief executive officer, at the groundbreaking ceremony.
But Confluence Foundation officials didn’t want to delay.
“We knew we needed to do this,” Jones said. “It just took a while to figure out how.”
The Confluence Foundation committed additional funds to completion. The project also received a $1.2 million grant from the state through the efforts of 13th District Sen. Judy Warnick and Reps. Tom Dent and Alex Ybarra.
The completed building also harbors a secret – under the completed walls and floors are messages of encouragement, added during the Written in Stone project this summer. Cancer patients and survivors, friends and family – people who had lost someone to cancer – were invited to write down messages they wanted to send to patients who would use the facility in the future.
Some people wrote down messages and remembrances with markers, while others created detailed paintings.
“This is a great day for us. And for all touched by cancer,” wrote one participant.
Cheryl Schweizer may be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.
