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
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