The federal government is releasing more than $14.5 million for a hospital expansion project in Astoria after the money sat in limbo for more than a year.
On Monday, local leaders announced the Federal Emergency Management Agency was finally releasing funding awarded to Columbia Memorial Hospital in 2023, but faced an uncertain future when the agency abruptly canceled the program behind the grant in 2025.
Technically, the money isn’t in the bank yet — it’s working its way through FEMA’s Region 10 office and then needs to go through Oregon’s Department of Emergency Management, which will receive and disperse it. But leaders with Columbia Memorial Hospital say they’ve been given the go-ahead to celebrate.
“We’re taking it as a victory,” said Mark Kujala, a Clatsop County commissioner and the executive director of the Columbia Memorial Hospital Foundation.
Once the money arrives, the hospital’s $300 million expansion project, which broke ground in 2024, will be much closer to closing its funding gap. But the roughly 17 months of waiting came with a cost, Kujala said.
“We’re still $2 million short in our fundraising,” he said, adding that some of that is tied to the time spent in limbo.
FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program awarded a $20 million grant to Columbia Memorial Hospital in 2023. The grant required a $6 million match to the $14 million the federal government would provide.
The money was intended to fund components of a new hospital buildout that would make the facility resilient in the face of major natural disasters. These components include a deep pile foundation and a vertical evacuation structure.
But in early 2025, the future of the program — and the funding already committed to a number of projects across the country — was in jeopardy when FEMA suddenly announced it was ending the grant program.
Legal pushback from Oregon and other states quickly followed.
In early 2025, hospital leaders had gone to the Oregon Legislature asking the state to cover the $6 million match required by the federal grant. This shifted to a request to provide the $6 million for the hospital project flat out after the BRIC program was canceled — a request state lawmakers granted.
FEMA eventually resumed funding the BRIC grant program, but Columbia Memorial Hospital’s money remained elusive until now. As recently as this August, hospital leaders and state and federal lawmakers said they had heard nothing from FEMA.
Kujala credits the efforts of state and federal representatives, who continued to push the federal government to reinstate the funding, for the movement they’re seeing now as well as staff at Oregon’s Department of Emergency Management. He said state staff kept the hospital’s project in compliance with the parameters of the BRIC grant even while the funding itself was uncertain.
“This grant funding is long overdue for Columbia Memorial Hospital and everyone who lives on or visits the Oregon Coast,” U.S. Representative Suzanne Bonamici said in a statement, adding that the grant “should never have been jeopardized.”
U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley agreed, saying in a statement, “You can’t wait for a disaster to happen to start preparing, and this funding finally moving forward will be transformative for disaster resiliency along the North Coast.”
He said he will continue pushing to get the project over the finish line.
The hospital’s expansion project is ongoing with the first phase of work expected to continue into next year.