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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 30, 2016)
Wednesday, November 30, 2016 OFF PAGE ONE PARK: Could break ground next year FOOD: Truck ready by next school year Page 8A East Oregonian Continued from 1A Continued from 1A Cutsforth said funding will come from a combination of grants and support from the Howard and Beth Bryant Foundation. No taxpayer dollars will be spent on the project. Depending on how the proposal moves forward, Cutsforth said the park could break ground next year. She said getting to this point has taken a team effort. “That’s the way things go in Heppner,” Cutsforth said. “It takes every single person in town.” Meanwhile in Boardman, the city’s new 50,000-square-foot recreation center is on track to open by the end of the 2016-17 school year. The building, which is under construction adjacent to the “Is there anything Pend- leton can’t accomplish?” she said. Swaggart’s food truck proposal was one of 15 finalists for the contest, which allowed supporters to vote once each day during October. The campaign spread the word through media, email, social media and advertise- ments. Although she competed against teachers from much larger districts in Knoxville, Tennessee and Los Angeles, the last update Swaggart received before voting closed showed her in second place. Despite signs pointing toward certain victory, Swaggart was still mentally preparing herself to show students how to lose with grace, just in case a last- minute surge knocked her project out of the top six spots that receive the $100,000 prize. “I had high hopes but I tried not to get carried away,” she said. Photo contributed by Kim Cutsforth Engineering plans show designs for a new fitness park on Riverside Avenue in Heppner. SAGE Center, broke ground in May and will feature an aquatics center, aerobics room, weight and fitness room and double gym. Voters passed a bond in 2014 to pay for the $13 million facility. Scott Green, recreation facilities director for the Boardman Park and Recreation District, said groups are already calling ahead to see if they can make reservations. “People are looking forward to it,” he said. ROEMARKS: URA donated $10K façade grant Continued from 1A Main Street.” The building was first built in 1907 and had previously served as a public library, a ladies’ boutique and the offices of the East Oregonian before Roe Gardner turned it into RoeMarks. The Simmons Insurance offices take up the eastern section of the large property, while Bloomz Coffee and Floral will move into the corner space early next year. The Simmons side includes a spacious open area on the first floor, a waiting area, board room, staff kitchen and a variety of glass- fronted offices surrounding the main floor and the upstairs mezzanine. The renovations included bringing natural lighting to the mezzanine by adding a row of upstairs windows facing Main Street. The Hermiston Urban Renewal Agency provided a $10,000 façade grant as a match for the $21,000 it took to put windows into what was previously a solid concrete wall. Assistant city manager Mark Morgan said the city was pleased to award urban renewal district dollars to Simmons Insurance Group for turning one of Herm- iston’s few second-story spaces downtown into a usable space. “We’re very excited about the commitment by Simmons Agency to invest in the downtown, and we hope that it leads many more to follow suit,” he said. Neighbors said to start out 15 people will have their offices in the building, while others stay at the 702 East Main Street address. He said “so far everything has gone to plan” in finishing the renovations. The office will be open 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Staff photo by E.J. Harris Kristin Swaggart reacts during a “Buck Pride” assem- bly where Swaggart was named a winner in the Farm- ers Insurance Teachers Dream Big Challenge. With Swaggart’s hopes now justified, she and her students will now be tasked with creating plans around obtaining the food truck and how it will be run. Rather than camp out at a regular spot, Swaggart said the food truck will be deployed to cater events on contract or for use at their existing community service events like feeding the homeless at the Pendleton Warming Shelter. BRIEFLY Soccer team’s plane crashes in Colombia; 71 dead LA UNION, Colombia (AP) — Colombian authorities searched for answers Tuesday into the crash of a chartered airliner that slammed into the Andes mountains while transporting a Brazilian soccer team whose Cinderella story had won it a spot in the finals of one of South America’s most prestigious tournaments. All but six of the 77 people on board were killed. The British Aerospace 146 short-haul plane declared an emergency and lost radar contact just before 10 p.m. Monday, according to Colombia’s aviation agency. It said the In addition to the commu- nity service aspects and its capability as a fundraising tool, Swaggart hopes to use the truck to provide culinary arts students with valuable hands-on experience. Swaggart said she expects the food truck to be fully operational by the start of the 2017-2018 school year. ——— Contact Antonio Sierra at asierra@eastoregonian.com or 541-966-0836. plane’s black boxes had been recovered and were being analyzed. The aircraft, which departed from Bolivia, was carrying the Chapecoense soccer team from southern Brazil for Wednesday’s Copa Sudamericana final against Atletico Nacional of Medellin. Twenty-one Brazilian journalists were also on board the flight.
