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WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13, 2018
142nd Year, No. 169
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WINNER OF THE 2017 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
PENDLETON
Round-Up
to tear down
Albertsons,
build new
retail space
‘South campus expansion’
will centralize operations,
add parking space
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Swimmers pass a 10-pound brick among each other while treading water during a junior lifeguard swim class Monday at
the Hermiston Family Aquatic Center.
LIFE SAVERS
Aquatic centers work to
prevent drownings with
expanded swim lessons
By JADE MCDOWELL
East Oregonian
A
day at the pool or the beach can
be relaxing, but for someone who
doesn’t know how to swim, it can
quickly turn deadly.
That’s something the staff of local
aquatic centers hope to avoid.
The Hermiston Family Aquatic Cen-
ter is teaching swim lessons to more than
1,700 people this summer, from toddlers
to adults. The adult class is new this year,
spurred by a recent drowning death of a
Umatilla man who jumped into the Colum-
bia River to save his son despite not know-
ing how to swim.
“It was heartbreaking,” aquatic center
manager Kasia Robbins said. “We want
to try to prevent it from happening ever
again.”
The new class, held Tuesday and Thurs-
day evenings at 8:05 p.m., has attracted
participants from ages 17 to 57 (the class is
open to ages 16 and up). The HFAC is also
offering more children’s lessons than usual
this year and as a result still has slots avail-
able. Usually the aquatic center has diffi-
culty finding enough summer staff to meet
the demand for lessons, but Robbins said
this year they have more staff than ever
before.
There are two levels of parent and tot
classes, for infants and toddlers to get used
The Pendleton Round-Up will expand
southward by tearing down the former Albert-
sons grocery store and building a new retail
and ticketing facility in its former parking lot.
Months of speculation gave way to real-
ity Tuesday as the Round-Up announced the
project, which it is deeming the “south cam-
pus expansion.”
Round-Up President Dave O’Neill said the
new 10,000- to 15,000-square-foot building
will centralize many of the rodeo’s operations
and give them more space.
The Round-Up’s key needs are for
increased retail space with room to store and
fill online sales, an independent ticketing area
with adequate office space, cohesive admin-
istrative offices and convenient space to meet
service providers. Revenue from retail and
ticketing have risen in recent years, and hous-
ing them under one roof is intended to make
those processes more efficient.
Randy Thomas, the Round-Up’s director
of publicity, acknowledged that the way cus-
tomers purchase tickets has changed, and their
ticketing infrastructure needs to as well.
“People used to buy a ticket, buy a hat, and
then write a check,” he said.
With more and more patrons printing out
their tickets at home or even using images on
See RETAIL/8A
MILTON-FREEWATER
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Pierce Strong, 10, porpoises out of the water while doing the breast stroke during
the junior swim team class Monday at the Hermiston Family Aquatic Center.
to the water, followed by six different lev-
els of 25-minute classes. On Monday
morning a mix of skill levels were practic-
ing in different parts of the pool. A handful
of very young girls were practicing bounc-
ing up and down in a shallow part of the
multi-use pool to keep their heads above
water, while in the lap pool small groups
of elementary school-aged children used
kickboards or swam laps.
“The young kids are learning the water
safety aspect, when is it safe to get in the
water and how to exit and enter,” Robbins
said. “Other kids learn how to stay afloat,
how a stroke affects their endurance. It
really ranges with age.”
On the more advanced end of the spec-
trum is the hour-long junior lifeguard
class, which gives teens a taste of the exer-
cises they would practice to be a lifeguard
— potentially lifesaving skills whether
they choose to work at a pool next sum-
mer or not.
“They’re going over training that life-
See SAFETY/8A
Scaly to the max
Corbin Maxey,
the Reptile
Guy, holds a
Brazilian rain-
bow boa con-
strictor on the
end of a stick
during a Sum-
mer of Scales
tour event on
Tuesday at
the Hermis-
ton Library.
Maxey will be
performing his
animal show
Wednesday
at Vert Club
Room 5 p.m.
in Pendleton.
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Trailer park
will connect
to city water
Long battle ended by loan for
$457,000 from Business Oregon
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
After years of operating without, clean
drinking water will eventually return to Mil-
ton-Freewater’s Locust Mobile Village.
The Milton-Freewater City Council unani-
mously voted Tuesday to authorize a $457,000
forgivable loan from the state to connect the
trailer park to the city’s water system. City
Manager Linda Hall said the loan will be con-
verted to a grant as long as the project is fin-
ished within three years of the contract being
executed.
Inside the urban growth boundary but out-
side city limits, Locust Mobile Village has
been in a protracted battle with the city to gain
access to the municipal water system.
In 2015, the trailer park tried to force the
city to annex the property into the system until
the city lobbied the Oregon Legislature to
pass a law that effectively scuttled the move.
A year later, the Oregon Health Authority
found a federal grant that would have covered
the city’s cost of extending water lines, with
the Umatilla County Board of Commissioners
agreeing to act as the fiscal agent.
But the council unanimously voted to
reject extending the utility at that time, rea-
soning it wasn’t the best use of federal money
and was unfair to other properties that had to
See WATER/8A