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.
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