DailyAstorian.com // TUESDAY, JULY 3, 2018
146TH YEAR, NO. 2
ONE DOLLAR
Astoria
fights
to keep
bridges
open
Temporary fixes
needed before project
By KATIE FRANKOWICZ
The Daily Astorian
Astoria engineers hope to avoid clos-
ing all six of the city’s waterfront bridges to
vehicle traffic by repairing some and closing
others.
The Oregon Department of Transporta-
tion has suggested around $131,000 worth
of repairs and improvements for the bridges
before September — temporary fixes to keep
the structures at the bases of Sixth Street to
11th Street open until the city can replace
them as scheduled over the next two years.
Replacement work is set to begin on the Sev-
enth, Ninth and 11th street bridges in October.
At a City Council meeting Monday,
Cindy Moore, assistant city engineer, recom-
mended $25,000 worth of repairs on two of
the bridges: the Eighth Street bridge, which
will provide important access for Buoy Beer
Co. when the odd-numbered bridges close
for replacement this year; and the 10th Street
bridge, which will provide alternative access
for businesses impacted by the closure of
11th Street.
She expects the repair work to cost the
city $19,000 at Eighth Street and around
$6,000 at 10th Street.
See BRIDGES, Page 7A
Gearhart
gets its first
pot shop
Sweet Relief could
open by mid-July
By BRENNA VISSER
The Daily Astorian
GEARHART — Gearhart will get its first
marijuana shop.
Sweet Relief, a family-owned chain of
dispensaries, is scheduled to open on U.S.
Highway 101 next to Gearhart Liquor Store
by July 16. This will be the fourth location
in Oregon and the second in Clatsop County
for Sweet Relief, which opened its first shop
four years ago in Astoria.
“We picked Gearhart because we love
small towns,” Sweet Relief co-owner Oscar
Nelson said. “We feel Gearhart is a great
location for both locals and tourists.”
Photos by Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
The new community development director in Astoria will be tasked with dealing with the open pit near the Garden of
Surging Waves.
DOWN A
PLANNING HOLE
ASTORIA STRUGGLES WITH
AN OPEN PIT DOWNTOWN
By KATIE FRANKOWICZ
The Daily Astorian
hole in the heart of downtown
Astoria will turn eight this year.
Some Astoria leaders believe
they are in a better position now to deal
with the open pit and surrounding prop-
erty than they were in the past, when
plans to build a community college cam-
pus and then a new library with housing
failed to launch.
Not everyone agrees.
The redevelopment of Heritage
Square continues to be a City Council
goal. City councilors asked staff to craft
a request for proposals this year asking
developers what projects they believe
might suit the underutilized city block.
The councilors have yet to specify the
types of projects they’d be interested in
seeing.
Still, said City Manager Brett Estes,
“I think there is probably the most clar-
ity in terms of where to move forward on
that piece of property.”
In recent years, the city had hoped
to get redevelopment rolling and poten-
tially build a new library at the former
Safeway property. But last year, the City
Council opted to renovate the existing
library instead.
“When the plans didn’t go through for
the library, we kind of just dropped it for
a while and put it on the back burner,”
Mayor Arline LaMear said.
The mayor hears divided opinions
in the community and on the council
as to what should happen there: hous-
ing, retail, parking. Amid concerns
about how much any kind of new hous-
ing could cost renters, some city council-
ors have said they’re interested in inves-
tigating more general public-private
partnerships.
A
Astoria city leaders toured a section of tunnel in October next to the pit.
The task of coming up with new
ideas for what could fill the hole or be
built around it will fall to the city’s new
community development director — a
position that has been vacant since last
October.
Estes hoped to find someone to fill
the position months ago. Instead, he had
to repost the job this spring after inter-
views with two potential candidates did
not produce a clear prospect. He whit-
tled down a list of new candidates and
has started phone interviews. He hopes
to have a final group of three or four can-
didates lined up for more formal inter-
views by late July or early August, he
said Monday when City Councilor Bruce
Jones asked for an update on the search.
City Councilor Zetty Nemlowill
asked for an update on the twin issue:
Heritage Square.
“I just wanted to bring it up because I
don’t think we should forget it,” she said.
“It’s been a priority of this city and the
citizens of Astoria for a long time — for
at least a decade and a half — to rede-
velop that area.”
Down a planning hole
The hole, in particular, has been a
conundrum for the city since it first
showed up eight years ago. It was
once covered by a concrete slab, all
that remained from a Safeway store
demolished in 2005. The slab began to
fail in August 2010, then cracked and
caved after a period of heavy rains that
December.
See HOLE, Page 4A
See GEARHART, Page 7A
Seaside celebrates groundbreaking of new campus
The $100 million
school project
underway
By R.J. MARX
The Daily Astorian
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Phil Broome of Hoffman Construction provides in-
formation to visitors Monday about the new Seaside
school construction site.
SEASIDE — The school
bus headed up the logging
trails Monday beyond Beerman
Creek Road and onto the rocky
and rutted hills to the Seaside
School District’s new middle
and high school campus.
“I used to play out here
when I was a child,” Steve Phil-
lips, chairman of the school dis-
trict’s board of directors, said as
excavators nudged and shuttled
soil not far away.
A state Department of Envi-
ronmental Quality permit,
received last week, triggered
a site permit from the city for
grading, excavation, utility
work and erosion control, proj-
ect manager Jim Henry said.
The campus will bring stu-
dents from three schools
located in the tsunami inun-
dation zone to the new loca-
tion on 89 acres just southeast
of Seaside Heights Elementary
School.
Gearhart Elementary School
students will attend a renovated
and expanded Seaside Heights.
A new two-story building
will house middle and high
school students.
Superintendent Sheila Roley
directed groups of school board
members, administrators, city
staff and the construction team
for the groundbreaking, what
she described as a “soft open-
ing,” with a more formal event
planned for later in the year.
Former
Superintendent
Doug Dougherty was among
those attending the event.
Dougherty, who retired in 2016,
is widely credited for helping
to bring the project to fruition
through decades of advocacy.
“It’s amazing to finally see
that the project is starting,” he
said.