Dutch Bros announced plans early Monday to donate the coffee company’s two-story, 15,000-square-foot headquarters at 110 SW 4th St. in Grants Pass for use as an early education center with a preschool program and public children’s museum.

The building, valued at $2.7 million, will provide a means for the Oregon Center for Creative Learning, which operates the Children’s Museum of Southern Oregon and an extensive preschool program in Jackson County, to expand into Josephine County.

Hillary Brown, Dutch Bros head of philanthropy, told the Rogue Valley Times the donation was the “largest in the company’s history.” With Dutch Bros culture “centered around philanthropy and taking care of the company’s employees and the community,” Brown said that donating the building was a meaningful way to give back.

“We’ve always believed in helping provide compelling futures — compelling futures for our broistas and our crews, which is why you have to start as a broista if you want to open a shop, and compelling futures for the community, which is why, when we were trying to figure out what to do with this building, we wanted to compel successful futures in another way,” Brown said.

“Southern Oregon is a resource desert, and Josephine County in particular has a tremendous need. Finding good preschool programs with space, and finding good opportunities for families, is so difficult here. … This was a way for us to support the community in a really meaningful way.”

While Dutch Bros officials announced earlier this year that parts of the company’s operations were moving to Arizona, Brown said Monday that the company will remain headquartered in Grants Pass. Employees currently housed in the building being donated to OCCL will be moved to the company’s offices and roasting facility on North Valley Drive.

Sunny Spicer, executive director of OCCL, said her organization had been holding community discussions for the past year, trying to find ways to serve the Grants Pass community. Spicer said that, region-wide, only 24% of children have access to early learning programs, which she called “a serious crisis.”

“This expansion has been part of our longtime vision for several years, in thinking about regional need and how we should be addressing it,” Spicer said Monday.

Expansion of the Medford campus had been underway for quite some time, with the organization rebranding in 2022 from Kid Time Children’s Museum to Oregon Center for Creative Learning, which includes both the museum and preschool program.

Founded by a board of directions in the late 1990s, Kid Time began with a small band of community members and a slew of mobile play exhibits in 2003, and opened in the former Moose Lodge (on North Ross Lane and West McAndrews Road) in 2005. Spicer started with the organization a year earlier, in 2002, agreeing to “help out for three months.”

The organization evolved and began offering a preschool program beginning in 2014, at its main facility and at satellite locations in elementary schools around the region before relocating to a portion of the downtown Southern Oregon Historical Society History Center in 2011.

A 50-year, dollar-per-year lease from the city of Medford and a capital campaign launched in 2019 facilitated a move to the historic downtown Carnegie building just before the coronavirus pandemic.

“The catalyst for what we’ve been able to accomplish already was when the city of Medford helped us with the Carnegie building. Getting the space donated (for Grants Pass) is a first major step going forward,” she said.

“The one thing we really want to emphasize is that it’s not a done deal. This is something we’ll still need community support for, even though we’re well on our way.”

Spicer said funding the Medford expansion ($8 million) and the preschool and museum in Grants Pass ($6.5 million) will be accomplished with a combination of grants, private donations and fundraising.

“It’s a lot to take on, but the need is so important and it’s time-sensitive. Kids are only little once … and it’s imperative that we work with them during these early years. … It’s not something we can say, ‘We’ll do it 10 years from now.’ It’s an area with the biggest return on investment and so much at risk if we don’t invest.”

Spicer said that about 80% of OCCL’s preschool families and about 40% of museum families need some level of financial aid. She noted that AllCare Health, a Grants Pass-based health care organization, has already committed to providing preschool scholarships in Grants Pass, and that AllCare has a history of supporting OCCL’s free drop-in programs that come with museum membership.

As part of the ongoing expansion in Medford, for which an outdoor classroom is already underway, another 12,000 square feet will be added for classroom and museum space.

Plans for the Grants Pass facility call for an early childhood education program on the first level by 2025 and a children’s museum on the second by 2026.

Dutch Bros co-founder and executive board chair Travis Boersma said in a press release on Monday that his company “wouldn’t be what it is today without the support of the Grants Pass community.”

“We want to show the same support to our hometown whenever possible,” he said.

“Donating our building to Oregon Center for Creative Learning guarantees more kids and families in Josephine County have a compelling future through early childhood education and family activities.”

Spicer said OCCL launched a new landing page on the organization’s website Monday morning that provides details on the Medford expansion and plans for the Grants Pass campus.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include information about OCCL families’ need for financial aid.