One step at a time
Published 7:43 pm Tuesday, May 20, 2025
Eastern Oregon University President Kelly Ryan, right, smiles while descending the Grand Staircase on May 16, 2025, with EOU Music Professor Peter Wordelman, second from right, La Grande City Councilor Corrine Dutto, second from left, and La Grande Mayor Justin Rock, left, during the ribbon cutting ceremony. For more than 20 years, the university has worked to get the staircase restored. (Isabella Crowley/The Observer.)
Eastern Oregon University President Kelly Ryan, middle, cuts the ribbon on May 16, 2025, at the celebration of the grand reopening of the staircase. (Isabella Crowley/The Observer).
Eastern Oregon University reopens Grand Staircase after more than 20 years
LA GRANDE — After more than 20 years feet again can grace the Grand Staircase at Eastern Oregon University.
For decades, the stairs served as a connection between the university and the city of La Grande. It was a focal point for community events and personal memories. Even after it was closed to the public in 2004 due to deterioration, the staircase continued to hold a special place in people’s hearts.
Now restored and rebuilt, Eastern’s President Kelly Ryan hopes the stairs can mean just as much to the next generation.
“Our staircase has meant so many things to so many people,” she said.
The project was a long climb for everyone involved, Ryan said, but now they stand at the summit.
One of the people that was there every step of the way was Vice President for University Advancement Tim Seydel. The Grand Staircase served not only a physical connection between Eastern and La Grande, but according to Seydel, a symbolic and emotional one as well.
“Now it stands again,” he said. “Connecting the community and the campus.”
Eastern Oregon University held a ribbon cutting ceremony Friday, May 16, to “celebrate something years in the making.”
Some of the speakers at the celebration acknowledged that the final staircase design may not be what the community expected, but all were proud to see the project completed.
The university received $4 million in March 2022 to save the Grand Staircase as part of a $100 million rural infrastructure package the Legislature passed. However, the cost estimates for the project were completed before the pandemic. By the time the funds were delivered and EOU was able to put the project out for bid, the price tag had more than doubled.
Ryan thanked everyone involved with getting the restoration done “on time and — thank God — on budget.”
The evening ended with a performance by the Grande Ronde Community Band as a tribute to Evensong, a spring commencement ceremony in which graduating seniors symbolically left the campus via the staircase and entered the community as their post-college lives began.
