OFF PAGE ONE
East Oregonian
A8
Thursday, February 10, 2022
Commissioners may have
been able to do something,
but the opportunity has
passed.
Power:
Continued from Page A1
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Traffic passes by the former J.C. Penney Co. location in down-
town Pendleton on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022. The building soon
will be home to a Sears Hometown Store.
Sears:
Continued from Page A1
Mountain Independent in
Arizona.
While 124 S. Main St. is
large for downtown Pendle-
ton, it’s too small to house
the full-fledged department
stores Sears and J.C. Penney
operate at malls and shopping
centers. While the Pendleton
J.C. Penney did stock some
home goods like its larger
brethren, most of the store’s
floor space was dedicated to
apparel.
Before its closure, the
Pendleton J.C. Penney prom-
inently displayed its status
as the oldest J.C. Penney
in its original location in
the country. Like all tradi-
tional department stores,
J.C. Penney Co. has shrunk
as it faced growing competi-
tion from big box stores and
online retailers.
Pendleton seemed to
defy that trend at first. In
Drivers:
Continued from Page A1
Primmer said there was
no certainty they would
stay com mit ted given
they wouldn’t be directly
employed by Uber.
“I don’t know how you can
guarantee who will be driv-
ing for Uber six months from
now (since) they are indepen-
dent contractors,” he said.
Matthew and Rod Johlke
also reiterated points they’ve
previously made to the coun-
cil. Given the size of Pend-
leton, having Uber and Elite
Taxi running concurrently
would likely drive the latter
out of business, Matthew
Johlke said. And since Elite
Taxi also contracts with the
city to operate its senior
and disabled transportation
program, it would leave a gap
Uber couldn’t fill.
POM:
Continued from Page A1
These two leaders, he said,
are Chief Operations Officer
Mark Patton and Economic
Development Director Lisa
Mittelsdorf.
Stokoe recalled the
process of hiring Neal. His
father, Gary Neal, helmed the
port until he retired in 2018.
The port began a search for a
replacement that “went on for
quite a while,” Stokoe said.
“We ended up interview-
ing several candidates for
that position,” he said. “And
Ryan was one of them that
was part of the interview
process.”
He said Neal “rose to the
top” of the candidate list
quickly. He had been work-
ing for the port in the ware-
house, so the port board
experience was valued.
“It seemed like a natural
progression,” Stokoe said of
Neal’s advancement to the
2015, Jager Development
signed a 15-year lease with
J.C. Penney as the Pendle-
ton store looked to make
some improvements to the
space’s interior and shift its
focus to women’s apparel.
But Pendleton couldn’t fight
off the headwinds forever.
Just two years after signing
a new lease, the corporation
ended the Pendleton store’s
106-year tenure along with
more than 130 branches.
When it opens in the
coming weeks, Sears Home-
town will join Western Auto
Home & Appliance as one of
the only places to buy large
appliances such as washing
machines, although Aaron’s
offers appliances for rent-to-
own. Umatilla County also is
getting its first Sears Home-
town location since Hermis-
ton saw its Hometown store
close in 2020. Early this year,
community groups briefly
turned the former Sears
building in Hermiston into a
daytime warming shelter for
the unhoused.
“There’s just simply not
enough calls in the market,”
he said.
However, the Johlkes did
offer a plan that would split
service hours between the
two sides: Elite Taxi would
get 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. while
Uber would operate during
the remaining hours. During
large tourists events such
as the Pendleton Round-Up
and Pendleton Whisky Music
Fest when calls for service
outstrip Elite Taxi’s capac-
ity, the Uber hours could be
expanded to accommodate
the customer traffic.
Mayor John Turner said
he was pleased that both
sides offered some conces-
sions and seemed willing to
compromise. He asked city
attorney Nancy Kerns to help
form a working group with
both the Uber drivers and
Elite Taxi to see if a policy
could be created out of their
proposals.
executive director job. “We
were familiar with him, and
he did extremely well in the
interview process.”
Stokoe said the port is not
ready to begin searching for
Neal’s successor.
“It’s too early,” he said.
“Out of respect for Mr. Neal,
we’re not going to get in a
rush. Our administrative
team has done an absolutely
wonderful job, carrying on,
even though they are under a
great deal of pressure, obvi-
ously, losing their executive
director.”
He added the port board
has not decided on how
to move forward just yet.
According to Stokoe, there
will be some sort of process
to replace Neal, though he
does not know what it might
look like.
“Ryan was a great guy.
It’s really tough, because it
was so unexpected.” Stokoe
said. “He was a great leader,
a great man and a loving
father. He’s truly going to be
missed.”
PLEASE RECYCLE THIS PAPER
need right of entry. These
include not just properties
on the route but ones provid-
ing access to other lands,
public and private.
There will be hundreds
of towers, and the entire line
will be over ground, Berg
said. He described them as
steel lattice and H-frame
structures. The steel lattice
structures average 140 feet
tall with a 40-foot-by-40-
foot footprint. The steel
H-frame towers are, on aver-
age, 100 feet tall, he said.
These are large struc-
tures, he said, but land-
owners will be able to farm
under and around them. He
added there are no safety
concerns from electromag-
netic frequencies, as long
as you are not “right up on
them.”
The power compa-
nies would make one-time
payments to the landowners
as compensation, he said.
Importance of
the project
“From our perspective,
we see this as absolutely
crucial to what we call the
future and maintaining our
tradition of reliable and
affordable energy,” Berg
said.
He said the country
will require “greater and
more robust” transmis-
sion connections between
regions and intra-regionally.
He said this will be neces-
sary if we are to increase
the amount of clean energy
moving from producers to
users.
Power, he said, will
connect to other grids,
extending as far as Arizona.
“That energy can move
Feeling powerless in
face of power line
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Richard Hemphill opens the gate to Parker Road on
Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022, to access a 1,000-acre parcel of
his family’s property where the Boardman to Hemingway
transmission line will pass near Pilot Rock.
far and wide, and it can go
the other way, too,” Berg
said.
And B2H could be
the transmission line that
allows power from Phoe-
nix, Arizona, on a sunny
day, to reach Portland when
it is needed.
The line will take roughly
three years to build, Berg
said. Construction could
start in 2023, and will bring
new jobs and business to
areas all along the route. He
added it will increase cash
property revenue to counties
on the route.
B2H affects ranchers
but helps data centers
Jim Doherty, chair of the
Morrow County Board of
Commissioners, expressed
mixed feelings about the
line. He said he has spoken
with landowners, including
cattle ranchers, to hear their
anger. For himself, he said,
he also has negative feel-
ings.
“Generally, I’m kind of
opposed to it,” he said.
Adding tons of steel
and wires across Mother
Earth is not ideal, he said,
but the construction of the
Longhorn substation, start-
ing point for the line, is an
$80-$100 million project
and would make possible
new data centers and other
area businesses.
“There are a lot of things
looking for that power and
needing it, and there’s a
shorter and shorter supply
down here all the while,”
Doherty said.
He could get behind the
project, he said, if the route
could be altered to do less
harm to local landowners.
“We’re taking one for the
team, and those cattle ranch-
ers on the century farms
that built Morrow County,
they’re really taking one for
the team,” the commissioner
said.
He said the county board,
at this point, lacks leverage
in this situation. He said he
would like to see the route
changed or landowners
receive a larger payout for
easements, but the county
does not have power over
this. He said a previous
Morrow County Board of
On the land Idaho Power
soon will survey for the trans-
mission line, the Hemphills
farm wheat. That property
alone is 1,000 acres, they
said. Jean Hemphill said her
family has owned that partic-
ular piece of land since 1917.
One family member
died of the flu epidemic of
the early 20th century, she
recalled, and others lived
on the land without indoor
plumbing. This is a land that
has a lot of history, she said.
Some of the history even
predates her family’s owner-
ship. One landmark on the
property is a stone structure,
which may have been made
during conflicts with Native
Americans, she said.
And though the Hemphills
have many more acres in
the area, they said they are
far from royalty. Just as the
land has a history of people
struggling, the Hemphills
said they have their own
concerns. Rising costs for
seed, fuel and chemicals have
made business difficult, they
said.
The planned construc-
tion of B2H has added to
their worries. They said they
are upset about work disrupt-
ing their farming. Another
concern is the possibility
that towers will trouble farm-
ing and wildlife, long after
they receive their one-time
payment.
“It’s been really, really
hard,” Jean Hemphill said.
She said she believes the
line is inevitable, and she and
her husband are powerless in
comparison to much more
powerful groups that are set
on the line.
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