Mount St. Helens Lodge & Education Center: Financing Outdoor Learning at a Living Volcano

Mount St. Helens Institute (MSHI) and the USDA Forest Service are transforming an underused visitor center into a self-sustaining campus that will host overnight outdoor-school programs, family camps, and recreation lodging.

QV structured the financing roadmap and built a flexible cash-flow model that turns program and lodging revenue into a reliable engine for long-term operations and debt service.

Once the full campus is operational it is projected to produce $3 million in annual revenue, create 25 new year-round jobs, and triple annual student participation to more than 4,000 youths served each year.

A lake with a dock in the foreground and Mount St. Helens in the distance

Problem

MSHI has reached capacity for day-only STEM programs, and:

  • No overnight facilities exist on public land in the Monument.

  • Grant funding arrives slowly and after expenses, which creates cash-flow gaps.

  • Lenders require security that most nonprofit operators on federal land lack.

MSHI asked QV to deliver a financing strategy that would unlock capital and de-risk a multi-phase build.

Forested hills in the foreground and Mount St. Helens topped with snow in the background

Approach

QV partnered with the MSHI and the USDA Forest Service to transform the Coldwater Visitor Center into the Mount St. Helens Lodge & Education Center, a self-sustaining campus for overnight outdoor-school programs, family camps, and recreation lodging. To unlock capital and de-risk this multi-phase build, QV structured a financing roadmap anchored by a 30-year special-use lease that provides lender-grade site control, designed a blended-bridge facility with a local CDFI to address cash-flow gaps from delayed grants, and built a flexible financial model to stress-test pricing, occupancy, and phased construction scenarios. This model, shared with agencies, donors, and financing partners, informed a phased build plan (from camping and RV sites to lodges and cabins) aligned with capital availability and demand signals, ensuring financial viability as the project scales.

A rendering of the facilities for the Mount St. Helens Lodge and Education Center as part of the master plan

Impact

This work addresses the limitations MSHI faced as it reached capacity for day-only STEM programs in the Monument, with no overnight facilities, slow-arriving grant funds, and limited ability to secure loans as a nonprofit operating on federal land. By combining recreation finance, outcomes-based modeling, and innovative CDFI structuring, QV’s approach is enabling MSHI to expand programming and build long-term sustainability.

Once complete, the project is projected to:

  • create ~25 year-round jobs,

  • generate $3 million in annual revenue,

  • serve more than 4,000 students annually—tripling current participation, and

  • provide overnight access for over 3,000 new guests each year.

The model also offers a replicable blueprint for financing large-scale infrastructure projects on public lands nationwide.