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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 2015)
Warriors kick off Winter Sports Previews Remember Pearl Harbor SPORTS • 4A PAGE 2A 143rd YEAR, No. 110 TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2015 ONE DOLLAR Death penalty case has local ties Bring back the butterfl y Violets return to Clatsop Plains to lure threatened Oregon silverspot back Marquis, Brown had hand in prosecution By KYLE SPURR The Daily Astorian By KATHERINE LACAZE EO Media Group C LATSOP PLAINS — About 9,000 early blue violets seedlings, native to the region, found a new home — or rather, returned to home — at sites across Clatsop Plains, assisted by volunteers from local communities who helped the North Coast Land Conservancy during the organi- zation’s two-day violet planting event recently. Planting the À ower seed- lings was the latest chapter in the conservancy’s decade- long quest to restore a prairie habitat on the Clatsop Plains and Long Beach (Wash.) Peninsula that will bring back a robust Oregon silverspot butterÀ y population, which is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The diet of the butterÀ y lar- vae consists entirely of dried violet stems and leaves. There to get the violets into the ground were near- ly 90 volunteers, including about 20 students from Sea- side High School’s National Honor Society and art of eth- nobotany classes. Communi- ty members joined in from as far away as Newport and Lincoln City, with only a few repeat volunteers between the two days. “The fortunate weather certainly favored our high turnout,” Stewardship Direc- tor Melissa Reich said. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Photo The Oregon silverspot butterfly. Using native plants The early blue violet shoots were developed from seeds collected since 2006 at Camp Rilea and elsewhere on Clatsop Plains. From there, seeds were taken to the Natural Resources Conserva- tion Service’s Plant Materi- als Center in Corvallis to be planted. When the seed pods reached maturity, the center gathered the À owers’ scat- tered seed to make a stock of more than 16,000 seeds. “We keep the seed from the different regions separate because the habitat and con- ditions are different,” Reich said. “Our violets need to thrive in very sandy soils and See PLANTING, Page 12A The Oregon Supreme Court’s de- cision to uphold Randy Lee Guzek’s fourth death sentence for killing a Deschutes County couple in 1987 has local ties to the Clatsop County District Attorney’s Of¿ ce. District Attorney Josh Marquis started prosecuting the Guzek case in 1991 as the c hief d eputy in De- schutes County and again in 1997 and 2010 as a special prosecutor. Marquis’ chief deputy Ron Brown was the Deschutes County c hief d ep- uty who tried and won the original guilty verdicts and death penalty against Guzek in the late 1980s. Guzek is one of 34 people on death row in Oregon. See DEATH PENALTY, Page 12A Seaside tackles dunes Katherine Lacaze/EO Media Group Seaside High School students Paola Campuzano and Alie Zagata help the North Coast Land Conservancy and other volunteers plant thou- sands of early blue violets on Clatsop Plains between Gearhart and War- renton, as part of a silver spot butterfly habitat restoration project . City partners with CREST to create new grading rules By KATHERINE LACAZE EO Media Group Seaside is receiving some help from a local task force to keep its dunes healthy and safe. The City Council approved an agreement with the Columbia River Estuary Study Task force to update the city’s foredune management plan last month. The Astoria-based task force is a community organization that specializes in environmental and coastal planning. The update could lead to more trees, plantings and dune-grading ac- tivities. Many of these are prohibited on Seaside beaches because of state guidelines . To conform with state rules, the city needs to update its plan and seek an exception to the statewide Katherine Lacaze/EO Media Group Seaside High School students help the North Coast Land Conservancy and other community volunteers plant early blue violets on Clatsop Plains. See DUNES, Page 12A Central School neighbors present uni¿ ed front Group opposes high-density housing options By EDWARD STRATTON The Daily Astorian More than 30 people who live near the former Cen- tral School packed the Blue Scorcher Bakery and Cafe Monday to talk about future of one of the largest vacant lots left in Astoria . The group came away with two clear points of consensus: no rezoning the properties to high-density residential , and no construc- tion without making sure surrounding properties won’t be damaged by geologic in- stability. New Riverview Partners LLC, headed by the late Mitch Mitchum, owns 14 of the 16 lots bounded by Je- rome and Irving avenues and Eighth and 10th streets. The site has been under evalua- tion by Richard Krueger, the developer behind Edgewater at Mill Pond and the Yacht Club Apartments. Krueger has been repre- sented in the project by Don Hanson, who has met with neighbors around the site and was organizing a meeting for Wednesday to gauge the neighborhood’s opinion. But as neighbors spread the word and organized their own meeting, Hanson announced Friday the project would be put on hold. People worried about the effect high-density housing might have on the neighbor- hood, from trash and traf¿ c to construction noise and emergency vehicle access. They also wondered whether the geology of the land, in a historic landslide zone like most of Astoria, could han- dle the construction of a large apartment building. Propos- als for development ranged from green space up to sin- gle-family homes. Déjà v u For Beth LaFleur, who owns property just uphill from the former Central School, the issue felt like déjà vu . In 1991, she said, the Central Neighborhood Association convened because the Cen- tral School had recently been torn down, and there was an effort to rezone the property to high-density residential, or R-3 under the city’s develop- ment code. LaFleur said neighbors then declared their opposi- tion to high-density housing, and successfully petitioned the property to be rezoned from R-3 to R-2, or medium density. “This is 25 years ago. We’re saying the same things tonight, ” she said. About 10 years ago, Mitchum was trying to start an upscale neighborhood at the site, including histor- ic-looking homes and others designed for older residents aging in place. The project ultimately went down amid opposition by neighbors and a slumping housing market. Neighbors complained Monday that the city’s His- toric Landmarks Commis- sion, Planning Commission and City Hall were largely rubber-stamping Mitchum’s project. See SCHOOL, Page 8A
