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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (May 6, 2016)
OPINION 4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, MAY 6, 2016 Mill Pond rose from ashes of the Astoria Plywood Co-op ‘F ortune does not change men. It reveals them.” That was in a for- tune cookie I opened years ago. I’ve seen many illustrations of its wisdom. And it applies to both good fortune and bad. How we respond to fortune, or adversity, says a lot about us. And that is no less true for a city. Calamities of all sorts have hit cities — from London’s plague to Chicago’s fi re. San Francisco rebuilt itself after the hor- rifi c earthquake and fi re of April 18, 1906. The downtown Astoria that we know was a remarkable comeback from the catastrophic fi re of Dec. 8, 1922. A more recent civic trauma was the Asto- ria Plywood Mill’s decline and fall. This happened not long after our family’s move here in 1987. I recalled this memory when a group of bankruptcy court clerks recently asked me to tell them about Astoria’s rebirth. My presentation did not Steve have to include bank- Forrester ruptcy. But it dawned on me that one of the most pivotal, transformational moments in postwar Astoria began with the collapse of that longtime manufacturer — the equivalent of bankruptcy. The Daily Astorian/Clatsop County Historical Society The Astoria Plywood Mill in August 1955. All the black and white photos on this page are part of The Daily Astorian Negative Collection at the Historical Society. Paul Benoit, Bob De Long and the City Paul Council Benoit showed great ingenuity and tenacity walked into our newsroom for the fi rst time just as the Astoria Plywood Cooperative was entering what became the beginning of the end. One of the newspaper’s stories on the co-op during my fi rst year was the hiring of a turnaround artist, whom the co-op board hoped could save the ship. I met the man, who seemed to have the essential energy and expe- rience. But the weight of debt was too great. When the end came, it was not strictly speaking a bankruptcy. But the mill — which had sustained hundreds of families and sent plenty of young Astorians to college — shut down. Left behind were signifi cant liens on the property and a polluted piece of real estate, including a mill pond. I T he immediate challenge for City Manager Bob DeLong and Community Develop- ment Director Paul Benoit was to clear the liens. Those who held signifi cant debt were Weyerhaeuser Co., Clatsop County, North- west Natural Gas, the federal Small Business Administration and Standard Insurance. Benoit succeeded in having the liens assigned to the city. Funds to clean up the polluted site were available from the state Department of Envi- ronmental Quality, but they were in the form of a challenge grant to be matched. Tradi- tional lenders were not touching polluted par- cels — later known as brownfi eld sites. Thus the city needed a non traditional lender to fund its portion. That lender showed up in the form of Shorebank, which Portland-based Ecotrust had just brought to Oregon. Another piece of good fortune was the interest of the Portland developer Art De Muro, who responded to the city’s request for proposal to redevelop the land into a ben- efi cial use. DeMuro brought an architect who laid out a vision that linked to Astoria’s his- tory. De Muro took considerable risk. His investment was more than fi nancial; it was emotional. Lasting evidence of De Muro’s attachment to Astoria was his request to have his ashes deposited in the mill pond. T he Plywood Mill site was an industrial site since the town’s beginnings. In my search for photos of the mill, I learned a few things. Prior to the Astoria Plywood Mill’s birth in the 1950s, there had been a sawmill on the same site. It was known as the Box Factory, and it manufactured fi sh boxes. Jon Englund said that one way of knowing the direction of City of Astoria Archives One of the Astoria Plywood Mill’s buildings. the wind was to look at the smoke coming out of the sawmill’s wigwam burner. The other thing I realized was the wide- spread benefi t the mill provided to Astoria families. When I asked Nancy Autio if she knew a mill shareholder, she said her father, Harold Akerstedt, was one. When I asked Howard Clarke, he mentioned a number of families where the mill was a source of sus- tenance as well as summer work. Steve Fick recalled that working in the mill sent a lot of young men to college. Englund said so many Finns had shares in the mill that part of it was known as Little Finland. Raimo Tila was one of those Finn- ish shareholders, said his son, Markku, who also worked in the mill for six years, starting in high school. The Daily Astorian/Clatsop County Historical Society A ll cities are built on layers of history. Because of its age, Astoria is even more an archaeological site. Very few who drive or walk past the Mill Pond residential area know about its meta- morphosis. Astoria’s ability to redeem that piece of land was the key to turning the cor- ner to a new economic era. Benoit, DeLong and the City Council of those years showed great ingenuity and tenacity in pulling off a turnaround that other small towns envy. — S.A.F. The Astoria Plywood Mill in August 1955. All the black and white photos on this page are part of The Daily Astorian Negative Collection at the Historical Society. The Daily Astorian/Clatsop County Historical Society The mill pond at the Astoria Plywood Mill in August 1955. STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher • LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager • CARL EARL, Systems Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager • DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager Founded in 1873