149TH YEAR, NO. 44
WEEKEND EDITION // SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2021
$1.50
Lydia Ely/The Astorian
A three-story, 39-room hotel is planned near Uniontown.
New hotel
proposed on
riverfront
Project planned
at NW Natural
property
By KATIE
FRANKOWICZ
The Astorian
A new riverfront hotel
is planned at the former
NW Natural property near
Uniontown.
The proposed three-
story, 39-room hotel would
extend from the back of an
existing building near the
Astoria Bridge. At a pub-
lic hearing Thursday, the
project gained unanimous
approval from the Design
Review
Commission,
which praised the thought-
fulness of the design.
The proposal comes
from Ganesh Sonpatki,
the owner of Param Hotel
Corp. His company owns
a number of hotels in the
Portland area and took
over operations at the
Astoria Riverwalk Inn
above the West Mooring
Basin in 2018 following a
lawsuit against the Port of
Astoria.
See Hotel, Page A6
Hospital close to
vaccination target
Small number
to leave over
state mandate
By ABBEY
McDONALD
The Astorian
Columbia
Memorial
Hospital announced that
most of its staff would get
a coronavirus vaccine by
the state’s deadline this
month.
The Astoria hospi-
tal said 94% of its 725
employees would be fully
vaccinated by the Oct.
18 deadline. More than
40 employees qualified
for medical or religious
exemptions, according to
the hospital, while 11 will
leave because they either
refused to get vaccinated
or had their exemption
requests denied.
Photos by Lydia Ely/The Astorian
Osarch Orak and Erin Carlsen sit with their son in the Beacon Clubhouse common area.
For the homeless, a
lifeboat downtown
Filling Empty Bellies, Beacon Clubhouse share space on Commercial Street
By ERICK BENGEL
The Astorian
H
omeless people now have
a place downtown where
they can gather indoors
during the day.
Filling Empty Bellies, a non-
profit that offers food to anyone
who is hungry, recently moved
into an underground space on
Commercial Street.
In the main area, visitors can sit
at tables and enjoy the day’s meal,
prepared and served at noon pri-
marily by Osarch Orak, the exec-
utive director.
“There’s still a lot of people
that don’t know we’re here yet,”
Orak said.
The coffee is on all day. A
computer for personal use sits in
a far corner. A closet stocked with
donated clothing for people to
pick out and keep just opened to
the public.
A shower and laundry are all
underway, Orak said. He wants to
arrange for other local service pro-
Filling Empty Bellies maintains a closet with clothes to supply people in need.
viders dealing with housing and
mental health care to have regu-
lar presences there. And he hopes
that eventually, at night, he will be
able to convert the dining area into
a shelter that operates year-round.
A permanent location
The space is Filling Empty
Bellies’ first permanent location
after years of serving out of cars
at Peoples Park and Ninth Street
Park. It also marks a major step
toward establishing the kind of
full-service resource center that
many local homeless advocates
and social services agencies have
long envisioned for the region.
See Clubhouse, Page A6
See Hospital, Page A6
Clatsop County recorded 422 COVID-19 cases in September, the second-highest
month, after August, during the pandemic.
NUMBER OF CASES
422
SEPTEMBER 2021
SOURCE: Oregon Health Authority