DailyAstorian.com // TUESDAY, AUGUST 23, 2016
144TH YEAR, NO. 38
ONE DOLLAR
Seaside
center set
to grow
Convention Center
opens reservation
books to 2025
By R.J. MARX
The Daily Astorian
LAND OF THE
GIANTS
Photos by David Plechl/EO Media Group
Bringing back the Ellsworth Creek watershed’s historic biodiversity and stream health is an ongoing project. “You can’t go
out and buy it,” said Dave Rolph, The Nature Conservancy’s director of forest conservation and management. “If you really
want an old-growth ecosystem, you have to restore it.”
Ellsworth Creek watershed
revival breathes life into forest
By DAVID PLECHL
EO Media Group
Agency insists
there never was
a signed deal
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
Dave Ryan is on permanent assignment as The Nature Conservancy’s lead forest-
er for the Ellsworth Creek restoration project. “We sort of took the watershed out of
its natural trajectory in terms of historic succession,” he said. As a result, species
like Sitka spruce, once plentiful in coastal forests, are now mere “remnants.”
Watershed renovation
Just around the bend from the Willapa
Bay Wildlife Refuge, where Ellsworth
Slough yawns into the Naselle River, a few
dozen weather-worn pilings are all that’s
left of a Spruce Division’s local camp,
railroad and processing hub. As success-
ful as the regiment was at waging war on
the giants, it was equally hard on the creek,
and its heavy footprint remains stamped
across the ecological integrity of the entire
watershed.
But for the last 15 years or so, The Nature
Conservancy has patiently been scooping
See GIANTS, Page 10A
See SEASIDE CENTER, Page 5A
Port pushes
hotelier on
legal claim
W
ILLAPA BAY, Wash. — All
along Ellsworth Creek, sol-
diers were slaying giants.
The year was 1918, and the
enlisted men were part of the U.S. Army’s
Spruce Production Division. Their quarry
— the thousand-year-old behemoth trees
that once towered in our coastal forests.
Cedar and Douglas ir were all knocked
down; their enormous timbers would form
the backbones and bows of allied ships.
But the most prized carcass of all was
that of the great Sitka spruce. Beasts that
spent eons rooted in rock and earth, in a
strange twist of fate, were split, shaped and
formed into lightweight frames for World
War I ighter planes.
An account from just after the war
describes the urgency of the massive tim-
ber-felling effort in the Paciic Northwest:
“No one realized, no one even dreamed
that before this single item (aircraft-quality
spruce wood) could be produced, an army
must be sent to make war in the virgin for-
ests, a vast industrial machine must be built
up, and a great story of pluck and grit, of
daring and patient resourcefulness must be
carved out.”
SEASIDE — Got a convention in 2025?
Now you can book it at the Seaside Civic and
Convention Center.
The City Council gave the convention
center approval to move forward with plans
for an expansion and renovation project.
“This gives us the ability to open our cal-
endars up to 2020-2025 knowing we have
the consensus of the council and mayor, if
we are successful in the funding process,”
said Russ Vandenberg, the center’s general
manager. “It means the council supports our
recommendation to renovate and add addi-
tional space to the center.”
Costs are projected at $14.6 million, and
could be paid by bonds sold by the city,
backed by a 2-percent increase in the city’s
room tax.
Vandenberg said he not only hopes to
recruit larger groups, but to keep current
clients.
“They’ve grown over the last 25, 30
years and we haven’t added any space in 25
years,” he said.
The Nature Conservancy has quilted together multiple parcels of former industrial
forestland in the Ellsworth Creek watershed for a restoration project of more than
8,000 acres. Hundreds of those acres are dotted with old-growth stands of cedar,
Sitka spruce and Douglas fir.
The Port of Astoria is pushing a Portland
hotelier suing the agency over a lease on the
Astoria Riverwalk Inn to admit there was
never a signed deal to operate the property.
Luke Reese, an attorney for the Port,
is asking Param Hotel Corp., the spurned
suitor for the hotel, to acknowledge several
key facts before a trial early next year.
Param sued the Port in October over
claims of local bias shortly after the agency
chose Astoria Hospitality Ventures to oper-
ate the Riverwalk Inn on a short-term basis.
Hospitality Ventures is led by Astoria devel-
oper Chester Trabucco and native Astorian
William Orr, the head of a seafood proces-
sor in Seattle.
The Port Commission in June 2015
voted to have staff work out an agreement
to operate the hotel with Param, which had
been courting Brad Smithart — the hotel’s
troubled former operator — since Octo-
ber 2014. Reese claims Param canceled
contract negotiations before they were
completed, while Param alleges the Port
wrongfully walked away from a binding
agreement.
See PORT, Page 5A
Diverse millennials are no voting monolith
By GILLIAN FLACCUS,
TAMARA LUSH and
MARTHA IRVINE
Associated Press
America’s oldest millen-
nials — nearing 20 when
airplanes slammed into the
World Trade Center — can
remember the economic pros-
perity of the 1990s, and when
a different Clinton ran for
president. The younger end of
the generation — now nearing
20 — can’t recall a time with-
out terrorism or economic
worry.
Now millennials have
edged out baby boomers as
the largest living generation
in U.S. history, and more than
75 million have come of age.
With less than three months
to Election Day, the values
of young Americans are an
unpredictable grab bag. What
they share is a palpable sense
of disillusionment.
As part of its Divided
America series, The Associ-
ated Press interviewed seven
millennial voters in ive states
where the generation could
have an outsized inluence this
fall. They are a mosaic, from a
black Nevada teen voting for
the irst time to a Florida-born
son of Latino immigrants to
a white Christian couple in
Ohio.
These voters illustrate how
millennials are challenging
pollsters’ expectations.
“Millennials have been
described as apathetic, but
they’re absolutely not,” said
Diana Downard, a 26-year-
old voting for Hillary Clin-
ton. “Millennials have a very
nuanced understanding of the
political world.”
America the great
Just 5 percent of young
adults say that America is
“greater than it has ever
been,” according to a recent
See DIVIDED, Page 5A
AP Photo/Lynne Sladky
Anibal David Cabrera, 31, stands in front of a mural in
the Ybor City neighborhood of Tampa, Fla. Ybor City was
founded in the 1880’s by cigar manufacturers and was a
melting pot for immigrants.