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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 9, 2016)
PROGRESS January 2016 East Oregonian/Hermiston Herald Page 7 By PHIL WRIGHT Kathy Baker opened her small boutique in downtown Stan¿ eld in the fall of 2014. Five more businesses opened during the next year. Baker’s Fun Fashions Boutique at 165 W. Coe Ave., offering new and “softly used” fashion, is going strong, along with the consignment store Bazaar Happenings, the Old Stan¿ eld Junk Store, Joe’s Treasure House, Blanquita Restaurant and Pupuseria, the area’s only eatery featuring cuisine from El Salvador, and the latest addition, the Lucky Jam Barn coffeehouse. For a city of about 2,040 people, Baker said the streak of successful upstarts was impressive. And the driving fuel has been local connections. Baker is a Stan¿ eld native. She said she built a career in retail, including working at Maurices, and loved fashion and helping women ¾DOWNTOWN DEVELOPMENT with their style choices. She traveled in 2014 to Cleveland to visit her son and daughter-in-law and stopped into a boutique there. Soon after, she said, she decided, “That’s what I’m going to do.” She went to Real Business Solutions, Hermiston, to seek help on how to start and manage a small business. Baker said Carol Franks there stepped her through creating Fun Fash- ions on Main LLC, which does business as Fun Fashions. Baker said Franks also opened her eyes to what it takes to make a business go. Franks, for example, wanted to see the business ledger. “I didn’t even have one,” Baker said. She was using her personal check book. Franks showed her that would not cut it. Relying on that expertise, Baker said, can be the difference a small business needs to be successful. Lucky Jam Barn also is a local endeavor. Owner Jason Sperr serves on the city council and teaches at Stan¿ eld Secondary School. He hired his Future Business Leaders of America students to help run the business. And Stan¿ eld librarian Cecili Longhorn owns Bazaar Happenings, which shares building space with Fun Fashions. Having a niche also helps. Baker said Fun Fashions is unique to the area and allows locals looking for affordable but upscale attire to shop local. Making it past her ¿ rst year was a milestone, but Baker said it took hard work, sometimes putting in 18-hour days running the business on her own. She said she aims to hire one full-time worker this year to help with everything from Staff photo by Daniel Wattenburger Kathy Baker owns and operates Fun Fashions in Stani eld, one of i ve businesses that recently opened in the city’s small downtown. inventory to customer service. The city also has its eyes on adding to Stan¿ eld’s business pro¿ le. City manager Blair Larsen said the city recently purchased a run-down property near city hall for about $65,000 and plans to spend about $30,000 on repairs before putting it up for sale. That kind of taxpayer investment, he said, can lead to private investment. “You can make a big dent by cleaning things to a little bit,” Larsen said. Stan¿ eld bene¿ ts from lower tax rates and rents, he said, so that helps businesses, and Baker said Highway 395 brings 10,000 people a day right through town, which she and others try to capitalize on. But the business boom in Stan¿ eld is coming from the people who built and are building their lives there. ——— Contact Phil Wright at pwright@eastoregonian.com or 541-966-0833. By JADE MCDOWELL In a community where event space is at a premium, the building under construction at the Eastern Oregon Trade and Event Center could be a life-saver for anyone planning a quinceañera or fund- raising dinner in Hermiston. Although the entire project won’t be complete until 2017, business manager Heather Cannell said the 25,500-square-foot event center building will be open for business by the beginning of April. “You can start booking now,” she said. That’s welcome news for anyone who has been turned away by the Hermiston ¾EVENTS Conference Center, which has already booked every single weekend of 2016 and many weekdays, too. Some of the community’s largest fundraisers have outgrown that facility, turning their events into sold-out affairs that have participants literally rubbing elbows. El Gran Chapperal, which used to be a favorite venue for quinceañeras, is no longer an option after the building was turned into the new Hermiston School 'istrict of¿ ces. And Thompson Hall on the fairgrounds won’t be available in another year either. In those conditions, Cannell said she e[pects local events to ¿ ll in the gaps in her calendar while she works to build a base of business conven- tions and other non-local users. “I see us getting some of the events that have outgrown the conference center, but I want to recruit out-of-town business,” she said. The new event center boasts a 12,000-square-foot open hall, three large conference rooms, a commer- cial kitchen, an array of audio/ visual equipment and green space outdoors for summer weddings and other fair-weather events. It was built to accommodate a second phase expansion sometime in the future. No one knows exactly how many visitors the new center will bring into town, but the city has been touting the project in its recruitment efforts to bring new businesses to the area. Assistant city manager Mark Morgan said they didn’t want to start “picking numbers out of the sky” when there were so many unknowns, but the city was con¿ dent that the project would generate some measure of visitors spending money at local businesses. In 2013 the EOTEC board commissioned a feasibility study for the event center portion of the project. The consulting group Venuworks based its work on the assump- tion that the center would have six conference rooms instead of three and a larger hall, but more current estimates are not available. Venuworks projected that the event center would host 149,375 for 240 different event days during the ¿ rst full year of operations. It projected the ¿ rst year of operations would generate $429,413 in revenue and $556,476 in operating costs. %y year ¿ ve, revenues were projected to grow to $592,499 with operating costs of $675,705. At the time Venuworks predicted that by year ¿ ve, activities held in the event center would generate $2,746,352 in economic activity per year in the community without counting the week it will be used at the exhibitor hall at the Umatilla County Fair. When the fair is factored in, the total economic activity generated by the event center was predicted at $5,709,016 a year. To book an event at the center or inquire about rates, contact Cannell at 541-298-9800. ——— Contact Jade McDowell at jmcdowell@eastoregonian.com or 541-564-4536. P r op e r t ie s - H er mi s to n, LLC FIRST CLASS SERVICE & LOCAL EXPERTISE Thank you to our clients for the continued confidence and support of our firm. ART KEGLER Principal Broker GRI, Owner 541-720-2020 realtorart@centurytel.net SHERYL NEWTON NANCY WALCHLI ELVA PINTO TAMI REBMAN Broker CRS, GRI, ABR 541-571-4141 sherylnewton@msn.com Broker, GRI 541-571-1723 nwalchli@eotnet.net Broker 541-571-6476 pintoe23@gmail.com Servicio en Español Broker 541-720-1758 tami.rebman@gmail.com PATSY KEIMIG Principal Broker CRS, GRI 541-571-5758 pkeimig@pkeimig.com STEPHANIE HUGHES PATTI BURRES SHERIE BRITT MELISSA MERCER Broker 541-720-9769 stephaniehughes27@hotmail.com Broker 541-571-5888 pattiburres@eoni.com Broker 541-720-1192 sheriebritt@gmail.com Broker 541-701-4408 melissamercer80@gmail.com SERVING THE NEEDS OF UMATILLA & MORROW COUNTIES 3 2 0 S . H w y 3 95 • H er m ist on , O R 978 3 8 495 E. Main, Hermiston (541) 567-5215 SHIRLEY PARSONS Principal Broker GRI, ABR 541-561-7434 sparsons@eotnet.net 541-5 6 4-0 8 8 8 • w ww.am westp ro p. co m 170 C o l um bi a R ive r Hi g hw a y I r r i gon , O R 541- 571-5 8 8 8 2 M ar ine D r iv e , S uit e 104 Boardm an, O R 541- 4 81-2 8 8 8
