The buckets are gone. The tarps are gone. And if you stood in the main hall of the Redway Community Center last Saturday afternoon, you could look up at the ceiling without flinching for the first time in two years.

A crew from North Coast Roofing finished installing the last panels of a standing-seam metal roof on Friday, capping a fundraising campaign that the Redway Community Services District launched in early 2024. The total cost came to $94,300. The community raised $87,400 through a combination of events, direct donations, and one very productive bake sale circuit. The services district covered the remaining $6,900 from its maintenance reserve.

The building is 42 years old. It has hosted everything: town halls, wedding receptions, flu shot clinics, 4-H meetings, Narcotics Anonymous, yoga classes, art shows, and the annual SoHum Thanksgiving dinner that feeds 200 people who might not otherwise have a hot meal that day. The original composition roof lasted 30 years, which is about 10 years longer than anyone expected for a building that sits under redwoods and takes a beating every winter.

“We patched it in 2019 and again in 2021,” said Carol Hennessey, who chairs the services district board. “By the winter of ‘23, we were past patching. We had a leak in the kitchen, a leak over the stage, and a soft spot near the emergency exit that made me nervous every time it rained hard.”

The fundraising started slow. An initial letter campaign brought in about $12,000, mostly from regulars who use the building. Then the SoHum community did what it does: it showed up.

The Mateel Community Center hosted a benefit concert in April 2024 that raised $8,600. The Redway Volunteer Fire Department held a pancake breakfast and silent auction that brought in $6,200. A group of local cannabis farmers, who Hennessey described as “the backbone of this community whether people want to admit it or not,” organized a harvest season fundraiser in the fall of 2024 that pulled in $14,000 in a single evening.

The biggest single donation came from an anonymous donor in Briceland who wrote a check for $15,000 in January 2025. Hennessey said the donor’s only condition was that the new roof be metal, not asphalt.

“She said, ‘I’m not paying for another roof that lasts 30 years. I want one that lasts 50,’” Hennessey recalled, laughing. “So metal it is.”

The project went to bid last September. North Coast Roofing, based in Fortuna, submitted the winning proposal. Work began in mid-January, timed to take advantage of a relatively dry stretch between storms. The crew worked around scheduled events, including a blood drive and two AA meetings that Hennessey said could not be rescheduled.

“They were good about it,” she said of the roofing crew. “They’d stop hammering at 6:30 on Tuesday and Thursday nights. You could hear the meeting starting underneath while they packed up their tools.”

The new roof is a 24-gauge Galvalume standing seam system rated for 140 mph winds. It carries a 40-year warranty. A gutter system was added at the same time, something the original building never had. Rainwater will now be directed into a 2,500-gallon storage tank for landscape irrigation during dry months, a detail that the services district added at the suggestion of the RCSD’s conservation committee.

On Saturday, about 60 people came by for what Hennessey called “a look-up party.” There were cookies, coffee, and a general atmosphere of relief. A few people brought their kids. An older man in a Mattole Valley t-shirt walked to the center of the hall, looked at the ceiling, and said, “About damn time.”

He was not wrong.

The Redway Community Center is located at 904 Redway Drive and is available for event rentals. The services district meets on the second Wednesday of each month at 6 p.m.