A2
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2021
IN BRIEF
Nehalem woman killed
in crash on Highway 26
A Nehalem woman was killed Friday morning in a
two-vehicle crash on U.S. Highway 26.
Leah Brown, 30, was driving a 1998 Ford Explorer
westbound near milepost 11 at about 7:20 a.m.
when the vehicle crossed the centerline and struck a
semitruck, according to Oregon State Police.
Brown was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.
The highway was closed for four hours after the crash.
Public invited to review
tsunami evacuation plan
An online open house and survey allows people to
suggest changes to Clatsop County’s Tsunami Evacu-
ation Facilities Improvement Plan.
The plan will consider existing routes — for walk-
ing and biking trails, for example — and look to
improve tsunami evacuation facilities along them
while dovetailing with the county’s Natural Hazards
Mitigation Plan.
To view online, go to: storymaps.arcgis.com/
stories/90bd871c0b984496902d0339247565e2
R.J. Marx/The Astorian
Veterans gathered Saturday to dedicate a Vietnam War memorial in Seaside.
Coast Guard rescues hiker
at Olympic National Park
A 26-year-old hiker who had gone missing for sev-
eral days was rescued in Olympic National Park on
Sunday.
The hiker had become stranded in a steep ravine
in the park’s southeast region, according to the U.S.
Coast Guard.
After a park search-and-rescue team found the hiker
on Sunday afternoon, the Coast Guard Air Station Port
Angeles sent a rescue helicopter. As backup, Air Sta-
tion Astoria sent an additional aircrew that eventually
lifted the hiker out of the chasm.
— The Astorian
DEATHS
Sept. 18, 2021
In DOWTY,
Brief
Joan D., 84,
of Astoria, died in Asto-
ria. Ocean View Funeral
& Cremation Service of
Astoria is in charge of
the arrangements.
GODDARD, Susan
Colleen, 62, of Seaside,
died in Seaside. Cald-
well’s Funeral & Crema-
tion Arrangement Center
in Seaside is in charge of
the arrangements.
Sept. 17, 2021
BROWN,
Leah
Marie, 30, of Nehalem,
died near Seaside. Ocean
View Funeral & Cre-
mation Service of Asto-
ria is in charge of the
arrangements.
Sept. 13, 2021
DEMPSEY, Douglas,
56, of Seaside, died in
Tualatin. Hughes-Ran-
som Mortuary is in charge
of the arrangements.
KOCH, James, 75,
of Seaside, died in Port-
land. Hughes-Ransom
Mortuary is in charge of
the arrangements.
SMITH,
Eliz-
abeth, 94, of Sea-
side, died in Seaside.
Hughes-Ransom Mor-
tuary is in charge of the
arrangements.
Sept. 12, 2021
NIELSEN, Emma, 99,
of Astoria, died in Asto-
ria.
Hughes-Ransom
Mortuary is in charge of
the arrangements.
HARRISON, Billy,
73, of Seaside, died in
Seaside. Hughes-Ran-
som Mortuary is in charge
of the arrangements.
Assault
ing false information to a
On
the
• Johnnie
Rae Record
Cot- police offi cer and crimi-
nal mischief in the third
degree.
DUII
• Vincent Ole Rulien,
Jr., 59, of Redmond, was
arrested Sunday on U.S.
Highway 26 near mile-
post 21 for driving under
the infl uence of intoxi-
cants, reckless driving
and driving without a
valid license.
PUBLIC MEETINGS
TUESDAY
Astoria Historic Landmarks Commission, 5:30 p.m., City
Hall, 1095 Duane St.
Seaside Planning Commission, 6 p.m., work session, City
Hall, 989 Broadway.
Seaside School District, 6 p.m., (electronic meeting).
WEDNESDAY
Astoria Parks Board, 6:45 a.m., City Hall, 1095 Duane St.
Clatsop County Board of Commissioners, 6 p.m., (elec-
tronic meeting).
Knappa School District Board, 6:30 p.m., (electronic
meeting).
THURSDAY
Sunset Empire Transportation District Board, 9 a.m.,
(electronic meeting).
Cannon Beach Planning Commission, 6 p.m., (electronic
meeting).
PUBLIC MEETINGS
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Continued from Page A1
Many of us are close friends
70 years later.
“When the war in Vietnam
got really intense the guys
were being drafted or they
enlisted in various branches
of the service. Out of 54 boys
in my class, 17 of them were
sent to Vietnam. The war was
very unpopular, but they did
their duty and came back to
a hostile country where they
were blamed and shamed.
They’ve come through it and
they deserve the respect and
gratitude they needed. This
is what we’ve given them
through the memorial.”
Kent Pollock, who came
from Phoenix, Arizona, for
the dedication, said he was
amazed at how many of his
classmates are remembered
on the wall, including his
brother, Craig Pollock, Class
of 1965.
In 2016, Hansen teamed
with Jennings, Crayton Mor-
ris, John Alto and others to
launch a fundraising eff ort and
make sure each of Seaside’s
Vietnam veterans received
recognition. They painstak-
ingly sought out all those who
had attended the high school
who had served in the war.
Seltzer Park, on the east
side of Sunset Boulevard in
the Cove, was chosen as the
memorial site for its historical
connection to the community,
view of the beach and acces-
sibility to visitors. The City
Council gave its blessing to
the project.
The city’s Public Works
Department cleared, exca-
vated and installed the mon-
ument in March 2020. They
later added sidewalks, land-
scaping and wheelchair
accessibility.
Designer Tony Goiburn, of
OM Stone, created the mon-
ument using laser sketching
and weather-coated the gran-
ite before installation.
“I’ve done big giant ones
and really tiny tree memori-
als,” Goiburn said at the ded-
ication. “And they all mean
something to me. This was
a very wonderful project
because not only those names
— and we went through the
list of names a million times
— but their stories came
out.”
Karl Marlantes, the Sea-
side High School grad who
went on to write about his
decorated war service in
“Matterhorn: A Novel of the
Vietnam War,” described the
city in the ‘60s.
“When we grew up,
everybody talked about their
fathers and their uncles being
in the service,” Marlan-
tes said. “We call it the mil-
itary today, but we saw it as
the service. You felt like you
were part of the republic.
And just like you have to pay
taxes to make the roads work,
sometimes you have to serve
to keep the republic safe. And
that’s what we felt.”
Seaside’s high participa-
tion in the war was “unique
to this little town,” he said.
“The percentage of kids that
went over there was huge.
There’s fi ve or six dead from
this tiny little city, which is
really unusual.”
Marlantes was awarded a
Bronze Star, two Navy Com-
mendation Medals for valor,
two Purple Hearts and 10
air medals. He also writes
candidly about his struggle
with post-traumatic stress
disorder.
“You heard people say,
‘Oh, gosh, you’re a Vietnam
veteran, welcome home,’”
Marlantes said. “And quite
frankly, it sounded a little
hollow to me sometimes. It’s
a little bit lame, you know.
I came home, as all of you
did, and it wasn’t a very good
welcome.”
In Seaside, it was diff erent.
“There was this feeling
that we were always part of
this community and always
welcome,” Marlantes said.
“The girls and the women
were always there for us and
our friends were always there
for us. And that’s what this
is all about. Our friends, our
neighbors, our classmates
who we went to school with.
They were always there for
us. And now this is a mon-
ument to that solidarity and
that love and that friendship.”
Hotels: Visitor numbers remain strong
ON THE RECORD
ton, 45, of Warrenton,
was arrested Friday on
N.W. Warrenton Drive
for assault in the fourth
degree
constituting
domestic abuse.
Theft
•
Phillip
Arthur
Schulte, 45, of Warren-
ton, was arrested Sun-
day at Walmart for theft
in the second degree, giv-
Memorial: ‘The percentage of
kids that went over there was huge’
Circulation phone number:
800-781-3214
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Continued from Page A1
City staff will review plans,
but the plans do not need to
be vetted by city boards in
public hearings.
Bensel is courting the
global hotel and hostel com-
pany Selina to manage the
property once the medical
building is remodeled. Selina
took over management of the
Commodore Hotel on 14th
Street after developer Joe
Barnes purchased the build-
ing that houses the hotel and
Street 14 Cafe in 2019.
The biggest challenges
the 15th street hotel proj-
ect faces is fi nding enough
parking spaces to meet city
requirements and fi tting in
a trash enclosure. All sur-
mountable, Bensel said .
Home2 Suites
Meanwhile, plans for a
much larger hotel on the
South Slope are still pro-
gressing despite no physical
changes at the building site
itself yet.
Astoria Hotel Investors, a
Kansas City, Missouri-based
development group, plans to
build a four-story, 90-room
Hilton-brand hotel at the
site of the former Bayside
Sentry Market. Discussions
about building a hotel on the
property have been ongoing
since 2018, but developer
John Ferguson, a partner
with Astoria Hotel Investors,
has given several diff erent
hoped-for starting dates over
the years.
One cause for the delay is
that developers are consider-
ing shifting from a wooden
framework to steel. They
are concerned about both the
cost of timber and ongoing
supply chain issues tied to
the pandemic, Ferguson said.
The city is also requir-
ing Astoria Hotel Inves-
BUSINESS HAS BEEN BRISK FOR
MANY CONTRACTORS, AS WELL.
WHEN THOSE CONTRACTORS
COME FROM OUT OF THE AREA FOR
A JOB, THEY OFTEN NEED HOTEL
ROOMS. BENSEL RECENTLY HAD A
CREW OUT FOR PAINTING WORK.
THERE WERE NO HOTEL ROOMS
AVAILABLE FOR THEM.
tors to upgrade a waterline
to the site to meet fi re code
requirements for lodging
businesses, negotiations that
have slowed progress on the
project.
There have been several
waterline upgrade require-
ments put on other hotels
in Astoria recently, includ-
ing the Bowline, a boutique
hotel in a repurposed sea-
food processing plant along
the Columbia River, accord-
ing to city engineer Nathan
Crater. That hotel, which
opened this summer, was one
of the few hotel proposals in
Astoria in recent years not to
experience major pushback
from residents who feel the
city has enough hotels.
“We would defi nitely like
to get started ASAP,” Fer-
guson said. “It’s in our best
interest to get started. …
Please be assured we are
defi nitely moving forward
on this thing.”
As it is designed now,
the Home2 Suites hotel will
be built on the land, but the
developers also own acreage
that extends out into Youngs
Bay. At the start of the proj-
ect, they said they did not
have an interest in building
over the water.
“If the market were to get
better, we obviously have
that 11 acres out in the bay,”
Ferguson told The Astorian.
“That’s always something
we could look at for sure, but
it would be later on.”
Fairfi eld Inn
N ext to the Astoria Riv-
erwalk on the other side of
the hill, the former Ship Inn
restaurant still stands and
the Fairfi eld Inn and Suites
remains an architectural ren-
dering rather than a reality.
Hollander Hospitality had
oral arguments in front of
the state Land Use Board of
Appeals earlier this month
after the city denied a one-
year permit extension .
When it was fi rst pro-
posed, the Fairfi eld project
prompted fi erce public back-
lash and renewed interest in
developing stricter city code
amendments to guide how
waterfront properties are
developed.
After numerous con-
tentious public hearings
throughout 2018, a major
plan revision and an appeal to
the City Council, developer
Mark Hollander received
approval for the project at the
end of 2018. Then the prop-
erty sat.
In
2020,
Hollander
applied for a one-year permit
extension. He argued that the
pandemic made it impossible
to get necessary fi nancing to
begin work on the hotel. His
appeal was shot down. He
appealed to the state, which
sent the matter back the city.
When Hollander applied for
an extension again this year,
he was denied again.
The City Council said
Hollander was using the
coronavirus pandemic as
an excuse and had simply
dragged his feet on the proj-
ect. Hollander appealed the
matter to the state. The hote-
lier has argued the city is not
able to pass judg ment on any
motives for asking for the
extension.
Hollander declined to
comment on the appeal or
any plans he might have for
land near the Astoria Bridge
that he leases from the Port
of Astoria, land where he
could build another large
hotel.
The Home2 Suites and
15th Street hotel projects are
in motion as visitor num-
bers remain strong despite
the pandemic and, in many
cases, because of it.
Hotels, which suff ered
early in 2020 amid local
shutdowns and statewide
restrictions, have seen visi-
tors return. On posts to rental
groups on Facebook, peo-
ple reported trouble fi nding
a room for the night as they
passed through Astoria. State
campsites were booked and
beaches were busy.
It hasn’t just been tour-
ists in need of a place to stay,
Bensel said.
Business has been brisk
for many contractors, as
well. When those contractors
come from out of the area for
a job, they often need hotel
rooms. Bensel recently had a
crew out for painting work.
There were no hotel rooms
available for them.