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Federal stimulus money will pay to replace the distinctive window-wall system at the Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center on Mount St. Helens. But visitors won’t be peering out of those windows anytime soon.

The U.S. Forest Service, which operates the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, closed Coldwater Ridge permanently in 2007, just 14 years after it opened. The repairs, estimated to cost up to $1 million, will let the Forest Service find a different use for the mothballed center, a spokesman said.

“It’s just a placeholder to keep the center maintained,” said Ron Freeman, public services staff officer for the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, which includes the volcanic monument. “We’re looking at options for some adaptive reuse.”

The building could become an education center, an overnight lodge or a science camp, Freeman said. “The main goal is,” he said, “it has to somehow tie in with the mission of the monument: research, education, recreation, public safety.”

The Forest Service issued a request for proposals to design and build a replacement window-wall system for the center. Work also involves removing skylights and building a section of metal roof to tie in with the existing roof.

Proposals are due Tuesday.

Coldwater Ridge’s windows, which reach roughly 30 feet high, increase the cost of repairs, Freeman said. “We need skyscraper-quality-designed windows. We get these tremendous winds up here and very inclement weather.

“The windows were literally ripping out of their frames,” he said. “People who work here would say you could literally see the windows bulging and pulsing back and forth.”

Coldwater Ridge isn’t the only site in the Gifford Pinchot receiving federal stimulus money: Projects in the forest received $12.5 million, with around half of that amount going toward roads, bridges and trails. But the center is the only site with an undefined use.

Repairs to the center will protect the Forest Service’s investment, Freeman said. It cost roughly $11.5 million to build Coldwater Ridge in 1993.

Without the repairs, no one would lease the center, he said. Before Coldwater Ridge closed, the Forest Service sought bids to operate the center.

It received only three, and all were “warmed-up leftovers,” he said.

“It was selling hamburgers and hot dogs, and selling T-shirts and videos,” he said. “We were looking for something bigger and bolder that invested in the facility.”

But no potential tenant wanted to sink a million dollars into the center. “They said, with the long drive and the short season, the economic opportunity is limited,” Freeman said. “You’re asking us to do landlord maintenance.”

Expensive maintenance led the Forest Service to close Coldwater Ridge. That decision led to discussion on the volcanic monument’s future, and calls for the National Park Service to take over.

Washington state’s congressional delegation appointed an advisory committee in 2008 to study options for the monument. That committee recommended keeping the monument under Forest Service management.

In its draft recommendations, the committee also recommended reinvesting in Coldwater Ridge, but not to reopen it as a visitor center. The center could better serve as an overnight destination and educational center, according to the committee.

Skamania County Commissioner Paul Pearce, who co-chaired the committee, said the Johnston Ridge Observatory, which opened a few years after Coldwater Ridge, serves much the same purpose as Coldwater did. “I think there are different uses for those facilities,” Pearce said.

“They don’t have to be identical visitor centers.”

Johnston Ridge gets visitors a little closer to the volcano, he said. “When you go up to Johnston Ridge, you can’t get a better view. You’re right there.”

That observatory received $1.5 million for various improvements under the stimulus package, plus another million dollars from other sources for deferred maintenance and to build an amphitheater and concession stand.

Johnston Ridge also will pick up some of the educational programming once offered at Coldwater Ridge, Freeman said. Coldwater focused on the biological recovery of the area following the 1980 eruption, while Johnston Ridge covers the geology.

“We need the biological story to complement Johnston Ridge,” he said. Occasional eruptions aside, “the geological story doesn’t change as much.”