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THE ASTORIAN • TuESdAy, AuguST 27, 2019
OPINION
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
DERRICK DePLEDGE
Editor
Founded in 1873
JEREMY FELDMAN
Circulation Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
Tread carefully with Grocery Outlet
he Astoria Design Review
Committee should tread
carefully with Grocery
T
Outlet.
Main & Main Capital Group, a
Texas-based firm, wants to build a
16,000-square-foot discount grocery
store on triangular lots off Marine
Drive between 21st Street and 23rd
Street.
The property is in a Local Ser-
vice Zone, where retail sales are an
outright use. It also falls within two
overlay zones — Gateway, which
covers the east side approach into
the city, and Civic Greenway, which
guides development along the
riverfront.
Many people have legitimate
concerns that Grocery Outlet will
make traffic congestion worse, con-
tribute to overdevelopment and
negatively impact the new Astoria
Co+op, the Mill Pond neighborhood
and City Lumber.
We share those concerns. Gro-
cery Outlet is better suited for the
South Slope, where there are no
grocery options and fewer traffic
complications.
Tempting as it might be to sim-
ply urge the Design Review Com-
mittee to find a way to say “no”
to this project when it meets on
Sept. 5, that would be a mistake.
The committee has a fairly narrow,
design-centric scope of authority, so
an overreach would invite an appeal
to the City Council.
The city’s development code
exists to promote orderly growth
and set standards for new projects.
It helps ensure fairness and pre-
dictability, so land use decisions
are made on the merits, not on the
impulses of the loudest voices in
Hailey Hoffman/The Astorian
Access is an issue for a new Grocery Outlet proposed off Marine Drive.
our community.
City staff recommended approval
of Grocery Outlet, with conditions,
but outlined several issues where
the Design Review Committee has
discretion.
The most important, in our view,
is access.
The main access would be a
driveway off Marine Drive where
TP Freight Lines is today. A sec-
ond driveway would be off Com-
mercial Street. The new store would
be at the back of the lots, at the old
NAPA Auto Parts.
Anyone who has driven along
Marine Drive where it bends near
Mill Pond knows traffic can clog.
Westbound drivers would make a
right turn into the Grocery Outlet
parking lot, which could slow traf-
fic behind them. Eastbound driv-
ers would make a left turn into the
parking lot from a middle turn lane,
a tricky move that could disrupt
traffic.
But drivers will do whatever
they think works — see Wendy’s
in Warrenton — including cutting
through on 23rd Street near the new
co-op and the Mill Pond neighbor-
hood, to turning at City Lumber, in
search of the second driveway on
Commercial.
The Sunset Empire Transporta-
tion District’s board, in written testi-
mony to the city, said it is concerned
about the traffic impact a Grocery
Outlet would have on Marine Drive.
The congestion, the board said, is
already problematic to the on-time
performance of buses.
“While we support economic
development, impacts to the sur-
rounding area should be taken into
consideration when going through
the review process,” wrote Kathy
Kleczek, the board’s chairwoman.
“With this in mind, we highly sug-
gest that as a condition of approval
for this project, that the committee
look at how people will access this
development and what the impact
will be to the traffic on Marine
Drive.”
As city staff explains, access
from Marine Drive is discouraged
in the Gateway and Local Service
zones: “Access drives and park-
ing areas should, where possible, be
located on side streets or nonarterial
streets in order to minimize conges-
tion on Marine Drive.”
But the city engineer and the
Oregon Department of Transpor-
tation tentatively signed off on the
Marine Drive access for Grocery
Outlet, mostly because of the mid-
dle turn lane and an existing drive-
way that could be modified.
If the project is approved by the
Design Review Committee, Gro-
cery Outlet would still have to
address access driveways, Amer-
icans with Disabilities Act chal-
lenges at crosswalks and the prob-
lematic intersection at Commercial
and Marine.
Jeff Newenhof, the president of
City Lumber, worries ODOT and
the city will eventually demand
changes to the intersection that will
prevent parking in front of his Com-
mercial Street store. He said a sig-
nificant change could put a planned
remodel in doubt and, as he wrote to
the city, “in fact may make it neces-
sary for us to move our business out
of Astoria.”
Design standards for access,
according to city staff, are among
the criteria that “should” be met by
Grocery Outlet, not “shall” be met.
That means the Design Review
Committee gets to decide whether
it is reasonable or unreasonable
to require the developer to fully
comply.
We think it is reasonable. The
committee should deny the project
unless the developer can show that
the main access off Marine Drive
will not create a bigger mess.
• Coming Thursday: Our view
of the shadowy group fighting Gro-
cery Outlet.
GUEST COLUMN
Preserve our right to bear arms
O
ne thing about turning 87 is often
thinking, “Here we go again.” A
good example is the recent mass
shootings that put gun control back into the
public spotlight.
Whenever a mass shooting happens, the
entire debate about guns at first gives way to
emotional reactions, as best shown by this
newspaper’s reprint of a Miami Herald col-
umn, (“Gun carnage is the
new American norm” Aug.
10, 2019).
Then reality sets in.
The Bill of Rights in
Oregon’s Constitution says
“the people shall have the
right to bear arms for the
DON
defense of themselves, and
HASKELL
the state, but the military
shall be kept in strict sub-
ordination to the civil power.” Oregon’s
expression of gun rights is more direct than
the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment,
which says “a well-regulated militia, being
necessary to the security of a free state, the
right of the people to keep and bear arms,
shall not be infringed.”
In 2008, the U. S. Supreme Court in the
Heller decision held the Second Amendment
protects the right to keep guns for tradition-
ally lawful purposes, such as self-defense.
Perhaps even more significant, the court also
held the right to have guns is an individual
right, and one not connected with service in
a militia.
When a gun-related tragedy attracts
excessive TV attention, however, congress-
men and presidents usually feel the need
to talk big about gun control. But they usu-
ally do little about it. Maybe President Don-
ald Trump and Congress will finally deal
with guns and mental health. But if they do,
they won’t do more than that. And that’s as
it should be.
The gun industry told us 20 years ago
there were 200 million guns in private
hands in this country. No one knows for
sure how many there are today. In 2018,
the Small Arms Survey estimated there are
a mind-boggling 393 million civilian guns
in America. And that’s up from 270 million
in 2007, just before Barack Obama became
president.
Eric Gay/AP Photo
Gun rights advocates gather outside the Texas Capitol, where Texas Gov. Greg Abbott held a
roundtable discussion on Thursday.
Thus, millions of liberals and conserva-
tives, millions of wealthy and poor people,
and millions of everyday professional and
working people have guns. But only a min-
iscule number ever have a problem with
guns.
The first mass murder in the United Sates
was in 1949 when a deranged young man,
Howard Unruh, in a 20-minute rampage
with a gun in New Jersey killed 13 people
and wounded 3 others. In the intervening
70 years, mass murders took place in most
years in America. And their numbers sky-
rocketed after the year 2000.
To be sure, no one thing, other than per-
haps mental health imbalance, can be said
to be responsible for the increase of mass
shootings. But one thing is certain — soci-
ety has been far too slow to adjust to the
speed of the technological tsunami of the
last 20 years. And that huge technological
wave closely relates to how guns are viewed
in America.
Today we have worldwide television
instantly dramatizing man’s inhumanity to
man. Yet hundreds of shootings in Chicago
every year draw little but tongue-cluck-
ing from folks who don’t live there. And a
resigned shrug of the shoulders from those
who do.
We have a movie industry, whose idols
glorify to kids the use of all kinds of weap-
ons, including machine guns. We also have
exciting computer games that show kids
bloody killings for hours at a time. And
there’s professional sports, which ignores
the violent character of players whom kids
idolize.
It seems to me it would help improve
society’s views about guns if our country’s
leaders of both parties talked and did more
about society’s need for better family rela-
tionships. Dysfunctional kids don’t usually
grow up without dysfunctional parents.
There’s no doubt guns are viewed differ-
ently today than when I grew up. In many
ways, today’s social views about guns are
a sad commentary on how violent a society
we’ve become.
When I was growing up in the 1930s and
1940s, if a child found a gun in the home
and fired it, people blamed the parents, not
the gun. Other than news reports and movies
about war, violence was something kids just
read about in books. Cowboy and Indian
movies and wartime news reels were the
most gratuitous blood and gore most kids
saw.
When I was a kid, guns were proudly
displayed in homes everywhere. They were
even displayed on rear window racks in
pickup trucks. In those days, anybody who
used a gun improperly was considered a
criminal, not a faultless victim of society.
A highly contentious gun issue today is
whether citizens should continue to have
access to semiautomatic weapons, like the
AR-15 used in some mass shootings. There
are over 15 million of them in America. And
according to the National Rifle Association’s
website, the AR-15 is the “most commonly
used rifle in marksmanship, competitions,
training and home defense.” If this is so, it
would appear this type of weapon fits within
the Supreme Court’s 2008 Heller defini-
tion of constitutionally permissible weapons
under the Second Amendment.
Not long ago some folks thought Presi-
dent Obama was acting unconstitutionally
and becoming a dictator. Today, other folks
fear the same thing is happening with Pres-
ident Trump. And some of these folks have
even talked about revolution and armed
intervention to keep that from happening.
It’s obvious unchecked political rheto-
ric can cause unintended consequences to
rational thinking about government. But in
this regard, all politicians should remem-
ber, as President George Washington once
remarked in 1799, that the best defense
when attacked is a good offense.
The chief downside to turning 87 is, of
course, not being able to know how future
generations sort everything out about guns.
In the long run, however, I suspect our
grandchildren and their grandchildren will
do just fine.
I’m confident our descendants will con-
tinue to recognize America’s free demo-
cratic republic is a profound rarity in world
history. They’ll remember what America’s
Founding Fathers realized all too well —
that kings and dictators don’t come about
when the populace they lust to control is
armed.
So by the time the year 3000 rolls
around, I suspect our gun rights will have
readily withstood more minor tweaking.
But our constitutional right to keep and bear
arms will remain as strong as ever.
don Haskell is a retired attorney and for-
mer Clatsop County commissioner who lives
in Astoria.