Dutch Bros announced plans Monday to donate the company’s 15,000-square-foot headquarters in Grants Pass for use as an early education center, preschool and children’s museum.

The building, valued at $2.7 million, will be operated by Oregon Center for Creative Learning.

Hillary Brown, Dutch Bros head of philanthropy, said the donation was the “largest in the company’s history.”

“We’ve always believed in helping provide compelling futures … which is why, when we were trying to figure out what to do with this building, we wanted to compel successful futures in another way,” Brown said. “Finding good preschool programs with space, and finding good opportunities for families, is so difficult here. … This was a way for us to support the community in a really meaningful way.”

While Dutch Bros officials announced earlier this year that parts of the company’s operations were moving to Arizona, Brown said Monday that the company will remain headquartered in Grants Pass.

Sunny Spicer, executive director of the Oregon Center for Creative Learning, said her organization had been holding community discussions for the past year, trying to find ways to serve the Grants Pass community. Spicer said that, regionwide, only 24% of children have access to early learning programs, which she called “a serious crisis.”

“This expansion has been part of our longtime vision for several years, in thinking about regional need and how we should be addressing it,” Spicer said.

Funding for the $6.5 million needed for the preschool and museum in Grants Pass will be accomplished with a combination of grants, private donations and fundraising.

“It’s a lot to take on, but the need is so important and it’s time-sensitive. Kids are only little once … and it’s imperative that we work with them during these early years. … It’s not something we can say, ‘We’ll do 10 years from now.’ It’s an area with the biggest return on investment and so much at risk if we don’t invest.”

Plans for the facility call for an early childhood education program on the first level by 2025 and a children’s museum on the second by 2026.

Dutch Bros co-founder and executive board chair Travis Boersma said in a press release that his company “wouldn’t be what it is today without the support of the Grants Pass community.”

“We want to show the same support to our hometown whenever possible,” he said.