Business
AgLife
B
Thursday, April 29, 2021
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Trade pact
gives U.S.
beef, wheat a
boost in Japan
By RICHARD SMITH
For the Capital Press
Alex Wittwer/The Observer
Construction site superintendent Bill Schmidt looks over the lot on Tuesday, April 27, 2021, for the forthcoming Dollar General in Elgin. Construction began this week, starting
with excavation that uncovered water mere feet from the surface
Dollar General breaks ground in Elgin
By ALEX WITTWER
The Observer
ELGIN — Elgin is joining
the ranks of Eastern Oregon
communities with a Dollar
General.
Construction began this
week along the Wallowa Lake
Highway near the edge of the
small town to build a new store
covering more than 9,000 square
feet. Response to the construc-
tion has been mixed. Some saw
it as a boon to local business.
A few locals saw it as a way to
give residents access to a con-
venient way to stock up on
cheap household goods without
making a trip to La Grande.
Others saw immediate issues
with the construction.
“The more stores, the better,”
said Teresa Martin, owner of All
For You Salon & More. “People
don’t stop for just one store on
their way to Wallowa Lake.
They have all those little stores
because there’s so many things
to look at — if there’s only one
or two things you just keep
driving.”
Arie Rysdam, whose family
once owned the property where
the franchise is going up, said
that lot sits above marshland that
is unsuitable for building. The
family sold the land years prior,
but it had been in the family
before then since the 1910s.
“I told them from the start it
was wrong,” Rysdam said. “It’s
a wetland, and you got springs.”
After one day of digging, it
seems Rysdam might be right.
The construction site found
Alex Wittwer/The Observer
A sign on Tuesday, April 27, 2021, along the fencing at the lot in Elgin advertises the
construction of a Dollar General in the Northeast Oregon town.
water seeping through the soil
after digging just a few feet
below ground level.
The site had once been nearly
30 feet lower than where it
stands today, Rysdam said, and
filled in decades ago, burying a
barn and old cars. Rysdam said
he believed the artifacts remain
underneath the lot.
The Hatch Group Inc., a Cal-
ifornia-based construction com-
pany, is handling the building
project, and the difficulties of
the site do not faze Bill Schmidt,
the company’s site superinten-
dent. He said he is no stranger to
opposition or challenges, having
built hundreds of retail locations
throughout the country.
“We’ll fill it in the morning,”
Schmidt said.
Molli Angelos said the new
construction will have a neg-
ative effect on her business,
Leaning Haystack Produce and
Retail, which grows food next
door.
“I’m losing half my garden
because of it. I’m disappointed
to see Elgin bring this kind of
store, when we have family
businesses here that it will
affect,” she said. “It’s a detri-
ment to the community.”
Dollar General has 17,177
stores nationwide as of Jan. 29,
according to the company’s
latest annual report and proxy
statement.
Construction began in Jan-
uary on a branch in Milton-Free-
water, and the East Oregonian in
December 2020 reported Uma-
tilla is on Dollar General’s list
for consideration. And the EO in
February reported Heppner resi-
dents opposed having one of the
stores there.
The Dollar General would be
the first of its kind in Elgin — a
major franchise with new con-
struction alongside buildings
that have stood in the rural town
for nearly a century.
Angelos, along with other
local residents, took their con-
cerns to the Elgin City Council
and voiced their opposition to
the construction, to no avail.
“A group of us tried, and
went to the city, but because it’s
commercial we had no voice,”
Angelos said.
Dollar General stores have
been thriving in small towns
that would otherwise lack a gro-
cery store. The Tennessee-based
company, which has planned
more than 1,000 new stores
across the country, operates in a
geographically niche market that
targets Walmart stores normally
operating in larger towns.
“The Dollar General people
are under the impression that
this store is going to be a pretty
busy store,” Schmidt said, citing
the major tourist attractions
down the road at Joseph and
Enterprise.
Locals also brought up
another issue — the ability to
find people to fill the new jobs.
Martin said as a business owner,
she is OK with Elgin getting a
Dollar General.
“I wish there were more busi-
nesses coming in,” she said.
TOKYO — It still is too early to
assess the total impact the U.S.-Japan
Trade Agreement has had on Japan’s
imports of U.S. beef and wheat.
Market watchers do see a positive
impact from the trade deal, in effect
since January of last year, but point
out the COVID-19 pandemic has
complicated matters.
Because of COVID-19, the past
year would have been an especially
bad time for U.S. beef to face a sig-
nificant tariff disadvantage in its top
export market, U.S. Meat Export Fed-
eration Japan director Takemichi
Yamashoji said.
“So the U.S.-Japan Trade Agree-
ment delivered important benefits for
both Japanese consumers and the U.S.
beef industry,” Yamashoji said.
Although the trade pact did
remove the mark-up on U.S. wheat,
the commodity only suffered a min-
imal loss of market share during the
See, Trade/Page 2B
Orders for
big-ticket
manufactured
goods rebound
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
The Associated Press
Orders for big-ticket manufactured
goods rebounded 0.5% in March as
U.S. factories recovered from Feb-
ruary weather disruptions. How-
ever, the recovery was not as strong
as most had expected due to ongoing
supply chain disruptions that continue
to ensnare U.S. manufacturers.
It was the tenth time in the past
11 months that factory orders have
increased with February being the
exception, when orders declined 0.9%
as severe winter storms raked much
of the country.
Orders in a closely watched cate-
gory that tracks business investment
plans also rebounded, increasing
0.9% after having fallen 0.8% in Feb-
ruary, the Commerce Department
reported Monday.
Excluding the volatile transporta-
tion sector, orders would have risen
1.6% in March after having dropped
0.3% in February.
Orders in transportation fell 1.7%
as a 5.5 advance in demand at auto
plants was offset by a 46.9% plunge
in orders for commercial aircraft,
a sector that has been hit hard by
plunge in air travel since the pan-
demic started a year ago. There have
also been a string of cancellations for
See, Rebound/Page 3B
Bringing a version of Hollywood to Enterprise
Grady Rawls’ business produces videos
ranging from weddings to advertisements
By BILL BRADSHAW
Wallowa County Chieftain
ENTERPRISE — Holly-
wood in Enterprise?
Well, not quite, but some
of Grady Rawls’ work with
Paper Street Enterprise
might rival it.
Tucked in a basement
studio under Sugar Time
Bakery along North River
Street, Rawls has com-
puters, cameras and lenses
of all types and pretty much
anything he needs to create
an audio/video production.
“We can take anything
on now, but I cut my teeth
on doing wedding cinema
from 2008 to 2012 and that
is a dynamic, live event,
so we specialize in live
events,” Rawls said. “For
half the year, I’m filming
hunting television. These
are guys who have shows
or have once-in-a-lifetime
hunts and they want to have
it filmed. Growing up here,
I spent time in the moun-
tains and now I get to — for
the past 13 years — I get to
follow people in the woods
doing hunts and then pro-
ducing films on that.”
Mostly a one-man oper-
ation, Rawls occasionally
contracts with freelancers
and farms out some of
his editing work online to
people around the world.
“I have a web of people
we farm work out to. I can’t
do all this on my own,” he
said. “I can shoot it way
faster than I can edit it, so we
have people around the world
who are helping do this.”
He’s also planning some
expansion. He hopes to
move his current studio
to a location on Main
Street, but he also is con-
sidering expansion beyond
Enterprise.
“Here we are in Enter-
Bill Bradshaw/Wallowa County Chieftain
Grady Rawls, owner of Paper Street Enterprise, edits one of the weddings he shot recently Thursday, April 22,
2021, in his studio in Enterprise.
prise, Oregon. I think I’ll
have a Paper Street Boise,
a Paper Street McCall, a
Paper Street wherever,” he
said.
Rawls said the name of
his video company comes
— not surprisingly — from
a movie.
“Paper Street Enter-
prise got its name from
the movie ‘Fight Club,’
and those boys went down
on Paper Street and had
a company called Paper
Street Soap Co.,” he said.
“How ‘Fight Club’ sat with
me is, you’ve got a guy
who says he became part
of the system and … he
doesn’t have any happi-
ness but he’s going about
all this stuff. He meets this
counterpart who ends up
being himself, if you’ve
seen the flick, but … he
releases his mind; he gets
to not worry about the
world and starts to worry
about living and happiness.
… I don’t agree with what
those boys were up to, but
it’s just the underlying
details of it.”
While his company
has branched out, one of
Rawls’ specialties remains
wedding videos.
“We still rely on wed-
dings — I’ve shot over 100
weddings in my life and
we do photo and video,”
he said. “We specialize in
what we call a same-day
edit and that is where the
film is shown at the recep-
tion. … It’s a very niche
thing, but it’s something
where we get to show off
our talent under super
stress to blow everybody
away about 10 o’clock at
See, Video/Page 3B