Safeway ‘remodel’ moves right along
■The construction has caused
inconvenience for customers
of Safeway, but competitors
have reaped the benefits
By Brook Reinhard
Oregon Daily Emerald
The University’s closest Safeway
Food and Drug has been reduced to
rubble in recent weeks. But the
campus grocery store on East 18th
Avenue is coming back bigger and
better August 12 after remodeling
estimated to cost $2 million.
The store closed its doors March
31, and the demolition began a few
days later. Whole chunks of the
building fell victim to the bulldoz
er, and within a week, Safeway was
flattened.
The foundation of the new build
ing is now beginning to take shape.
Hard hat-clad workers march
around the site, pouring concrete
and laying pipes. There’s very little
evidence that the old Safeway even
existed. Only one wall, shared with
the adjacent Hirons Drug Store, re
mains of the old store.
“It’s considered a remodel be
cause we left an existing wall
standing,” said Project Engineer
Eric Kneeland, speaking from the
temporary office trailer at the site.
“Everything was just outdated.”
According to Kneeland, the new
building will be 34,497 square feet,
larger than the original building,
and provide new services includ
ing a pharmacy, an improvement
Hirons isn’t too pleased with.
Hirons, located on the corner of
ARM A
KEEP OUT
Thomas Patterson Emerald
The Safeway Food and Drug located on 18th Avenue between Pearl and Oak streets is now a pile of rubble and dirt located on 18th Avenue
between Pearl and Oak streets. The market, a popular source of groceries for students, will reappear August 12.
East 18th Avenue and Pearl Street
for almost 70 years, operates its
own pharmacy.
“It will be hard, but I think we’ll
pull through,” Hirons clerk Mike
Moresi said.
The drug store has placed signs
along the fence of the construction
site trying let customers know it’s
still open, even if Safeway isn’t.
“Business has picked up some,”
Moresi said, adding that long-time
customers are still navigating
around the construction fences to
find the entrance to the store.
PC Market of Choice, on the
other hand, couldn’t be happier
with Safeway’s remodel. The
chain’s Franklin Boulevard loca
tion, which was also remodeled a
year and a half ago, is several
blocks east of student residence
halls. Assistant Manager Greg
Kruse said they’ve seen a “pretty
substantial” increase in customers
who formerly went to Safeway for
groceries.
“A lot of the new customers will
stay,” Kruse said. “They really like
our store.”
E-mail reporter Brook Reinhard
atbrookreinhard@dailyemerald.com.
News brief
State board works on
OSU budget shortfall
The State Board of Higher Educa
tion implemented a plan on Friday
to ensure Oregon State University re
covers from an athletic budget deficit
without borrowing heavily from the
school's education funds, student
board member Tim Young said.
The plan will toughen checks
and balances on OSU’s methods for
erasing the remainder of the long
standing deficit by requiring QSU
officials to make “periodic” reports
to the board, Young said. The plan
also establishes target dates for re
ducing the debt incrementally.
A report by Oregon University
System auditors revealed that as of
December 2001, the OSU Depart
ment of Athletics had borrowed $8
million from the school’s general
fund while increasing spending.
The general fund covers operating
and education expenses. OSU an
nounced a $19 million general fund
shortfall in October.
In other business Friday, the
board’s Budget and Finance Com
mittee approved an $8.4 million
plan to build a residence hall that
will house 225 students at the
main branch of the Oregon Insti
tute of Technology in Klamath
Falls. The project also calls for a
$2 million renovation of OIT’s
current residence hall.
Erin Watari, student member of
the board, said the results of an
OUS diversity report indicated a
slight increase in the number of stu
dents of color attending OUS
schools since 1996. The report was
presented to the board’s Strategic
Planning Committee.
— Eric Martin
Ashcroft’s career thrives, despite controversies
ay tnris monaics
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON (KRT) — For a
time after the Sept. 11 attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Penta
gon, it seemed possible to forget the
uncompromising conservative poli
tics and sharp elbows that helped
launch Attorney General John
Ashcroft’s career.
More than most other Bush ad
ministration officials, Ashcroft has
become the public face of the gov
ernment’s war on terror, appearing
often before television cameras to
announce the latest arrest or to pro
mote the newest anti-terror initia
tive. A year after the bruising con
firmation hearings in which Senate
liberals sought to cast him as a
hard-right ideologue, his populari
ty has soared.
But two high-profile legal set
backs for the Department of Justice
last week thrust Ashcroft’s social
agenda back in the public spotlight.
The rulings struck down part of a
federal law banning simulated child
pornography and rejected his de
partment’s challenge to an Oregon
statute legalizing assisted suicide.
In the Oregon case, Ashcroft tried
to use a decades-old narcotics law,
initially intended to curb the mar
ket in illicit drugs, to hamper physi
cians who sought to help terminal
ly ill patients take their own lives.
In the virtual child pornography
case, the Justice Department argued
before the Supreme Court defend
ing a 1996 law that made it illegal
to use simulated images of children
in pornographic films, or even to
use adult actors who simply ap
peared underage.
The decisions served as a reminder
that, despite the national near-con
sensus behind Ashcroft's tactics
against suspected terrorists, the na
tion’s underlying divisions on social
policies remain as deep as ever.
“He is riding the crest of a wave
of popularity ... fighting the war on
terror,” said Richard Semiatin, as
sistant professor of government at
American University. But, Semiatin
added, “that doesn’t mean that the
(conservative) policies that are per
sonally important to him, that go
under the radar screen,” are any less
controversial with some members
of the public.
Ashcroft had little visibility on law
enforcement issues before Sept. 11.
His signature issues were abor
tion, support for gun-owner rights,
efforts to reduce funding for the Na
tional Endowment for the Arts, and
limits on welfare payments.
An evangelical Christian and for
mer touring gospel singer, Ashcroft
early in his term as attorney general
organized daily prayer sessions for
his staff.
In the Senate, Ashcroft was of
ten on the margins, even during
the years after the 1994 elections
when GOP conservatives dominat
ed, because he insisted on pushing
deeply conservative issues that
did not have broad public support.
That tactic galvanized opponents
on the left. Pragmatic conserva
tives like Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss.,
viewed those initiatives as quixot
ic quests that were more trouble
than they were worth.
His credentials as a social conser
vative were held in such high esteem
by party conservatives that he ran a
credible campaign for the 2000 Re
publican presidential nomination,
although he was never able to broad
en his appeal beyond that base and
dropped out of the race early on.
His hard-nosed tactics have
caused him “some trouble.... He can
be rather combative and take a very
hard line and he has made some ene
mies,” said Mark Rozell, a professor
of politics at Catholic University.
Despite those problems,
Ashcroft’s career at Justice has taken
off. He enjoys considerable support
at the White House, in part because
his public approval ratings are so
high. There is some talk that he
might replace Vice President Ch
eney as President Bush’s running
mate in 2004 if Cheney’s health
problems keep him from running.
“In a way, the tragedy of 9/11 has
propelled Ashcroft into a position
of greater power and leverage than
one ever would have suspected; he
has really cast himself as the
guardian of the homeland,” said
Alan Lichtmann, a history professor
at American University.
Yet the court cases that the de
partment lost last week may pro
vide more of a window on Ashcroft
than his war on terror.
In the Oregon case, U.S. District
Judge Robert Jones rejected a Justice
Department attempt to ban doctors
from administering drugs used in
assisted suicide. Jones issued a
scorching commentary, sharply
criticizing Ashcroft for overstep
ping his authority in trying to
thwart the law by issuing a directive
warning doctors not to participate
or risk losing their licenses to pre
scribe federally controlled sub
stances. Jones noted that the voters
had twice approved the law.
The Justice Department has
called the Oregon law inhumane
and has said that doctors should not
assist in “killing” the terminally ill.
Susan Bloch, professor of con
stitutional law at the Georgetown
University Law Center, said that
the department had taken a legally
aggressive approach by using the
Controlled Substances Act to at
tack the statute. The act was writ
ten to fight drug traffic, she said,
and its use in the assisted suicide
issue is questionable. That is par
ticularly so, she said, because the
Bush administration has regularly
voiced support for giving states
more leeway.
“Here is Oregon doing an experi
ment on a difficult issue of law and
the federal government is coming in
and saying “You can't,’” Bloch said.
“That is fairly aggressive.”
©2002, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune
Information Services.
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