Wednesday, November 30, 2016
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PARK: Could break ground next year FOOD: Truck ready by next school year
Page 8A
East Oregonian
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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
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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.