Conservation Corps traded Ukiah cabins for $68 million campus in Willits

WILLITS, CA., 8/22/26 — For more than three decades, the California Conservation Corps housed its Mendocino County crews in cabins on an old dairy farm south of Ukiah, bunks the young people helped hammer together in the 1980s. Last September, the corps handed them keys to a $68 million campus: seven dormitories, a gym, a dining hall and a solar array on 27 acres of a wetland parcel on the east side of Willits.

The corps’ Mendocino Center opened at 600 East Hill Road on Sept. 26, 2025, with tribal dancers from Round Valley, the Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians, the local VFW post and Mayor Tom Allman on hand. It capped a decade of work: state budget records trace the money from $200,000 for a site search in the 2015-16 budget through a $61.6 million construction appropriation, about $68 million in all. The construction contract alone came to $55.7 million.