A18
News
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, November 28, 2018
TOURISM
POOL
Continued from Page A1
Continued from Page A1
Professor Zhao Zhongzhen, who
starred in the documentary pro-
duced for the Chinese version of the
Discovery Channel, also sits on a
tourism board in China, which has 3
million visits on its website, Merritt
said. He said Zhao has encouraged
every travel agency in China to pro-
mote visits to Kam Wah Chung.
Two months later, a film crew
from Beach House Pictures of Sin-
gapore came to Kam Wah Chung for
production of a similar documentary
for the American version of Discov-
ery Channel. Dr. Eric Brand, a stu-
dent of Zhao’s, and Beth Howlett,
vice president of communications
and academic services at the Ore-
gon College of Oriental Medicine
in Portland, were presenters in the
video shoot.
A steering committee represent-
ing the city of John Day, the Grant
County Court, the John Day-Can-
yon City Parks and Recreation Dis-
trict, Blue Mountain Hospital and
Grant School District 3 has been
evaluating options presented by
Counsilman-Hunsaker. While the
city owns Gleason Pool, the recre-
ation district currently manages the
facility.
The city also has contacted
Opsis Architecture of Portland to
develop options for an indoor rec-
reation space adjacent to the pool,
Green told the council.
“They are defining program op-
tions for the types of rec spaces we
could incorporate that would allow
us to have year-round recreational
opportunities,” Green said.
In addition to reviewing aquat-
ics facilities in other Oregon com-
munities, including Madras, the
steering committee discussed four
aquatic facility options and two
site location options at its Nov. 8
meeting.
Growing tourism
Eagle photos/Richard Hanners
All this attention has enormous
implications for Grant County’s
small tourist industry, which could
be overwhelmed by bus loads of
Chinese tourists in coming years. It
also could increase impacts to the
historical site itself, Merritt said.
For the first time, the interpretive
center began to take reservations for
tours this year, Merritt said. Guides
were conducting 16-20 visitors per
hour through the small store, and
some visitors were turned away, he
said. As word gets out, more people
will turn to reservations, and it’s
possible the site will rely entirely on
reservations in the future, he said.
The building, which began as
a trading post built on The Dalles
Military Road around 1866, has a
good stone foundation and walls,
but wear and tear from aging and
visitation is becoming evident on
wooden elements, such as window
and door frames, structural posts
and flooring.
In 2007, a preservation crew
evaluated the building and gave it
an estimated lifespan of 50 years.
Merritt hoped that figure could be
pushed up to 100 years. State pres-
ervation experts were expected to
complete a study this winter to see
if a cap on visitation is necessary to
protect the historical building, he
said.
The 2007 crew had recommend-
ed completely enclosing the Kam
Wah Chung building to protect it
from the elements, Merritt said. In-
stead, the state is considering build-
ing a new interpretive center after
acquiring nearby city-owned park-
land.
The new center could be com-
pleted in 4-6 years, Merritt said. One
feature he said he’d like to see is a
virtual reality room that would mim-
ic the Kam Wah Chung interior us-
ing lifelike murals on the walls and
displaying items currently stored
in the archives building. The goal
would be to offer visitors an alter-
native to actual tours, which would
address high demand and lessen im-
pacts on the small building.
Historical research
Other work continues at Kam
Wah Chung, as Merritt fields nu-
merous requests from researchers
interested in the site. In early Octo-
ber, Chelsea Rose, an archaeologist
at the Southern Oregon Univer-
COALITION
Continued from Page A1
new county commissioner in
January, and a campaign to
build support for the coalition
should be in place by early
next year, Becker said.
From left, Katie Johnson and Chelsea Rose, from the Southern
Oregon University Laboratory of Anthropology, and Lew Somers,
of Archaeo Physics LLC, take a break from scanning the grounds
outside the Kam Wah Chung Co. building in John Day.
Pool options
The historic Kam Wah Chung building in John Day.
sity Laboratory of Anthropology,
brought a crew to John Day to use
ground-penetrating radar to survey
the Kam Wah Chung site.
In addition to studying Chinese
mining sites in the Malheur National
Forest, Rose has conducted research
in Jacksonville, home of Oregon’s
first Chinatown, and made two field
trips to Guangdong, where most of
Oregon’s Chinese miners originat-
ed.
On top of that, Merritt reported
that a 10-year project to scan about
20,000 documents discovered at
Kam Wah Chung has been complet-
ed — three years ahead of schedule.
This is the largest collection of Chi-
nese documents in North America
outside of British Columbia, he said.
About 6,000 of the documents are in
Chinese, and plans call for a small
committee of translators to work on
the documents in batches to ensure
quality control, he said.
The Friends of Kam Wah Chung
also had good news to report. The
store in the interpretive center took
in about $34,000 in 2018, Kocis
said, including $10,000 in donations
and $2,000 in membership dues.
The largest donation was a $100
bill, he said.
Kocis credited manager Chris
Labhart for the store’s success. He
noted that a visitor from the Lan
Su Chinese Garden in Portland said
the selection of items offered at the
Kam Wah Chung gift store were
much better than theirs.
Historic mining
Merritt said the Friends will use
the funds to acquire a historic hy-
draulic mining monitor from Isa
An important message
is that the coalition is a
state-funded agency that is not
using local taxpayer funds,
said John Day City Manager
Nick Green, the coalition’s
executive director.
The current internet in-
frastructure serving Grant
Larkin. The 8-foot long, 500-600
pound cast-iron nozzle was used to
direct high-pressure water at mining
sites in Grant County.
About 90 percent of the 300 hy-
draulic miners who worked in the
county were Chinese, Merritt said.
The monitor and its heavy base will
be moved to the Kam Wah Chung
site and featured in a future exhibit
on the role of Chinese miners here,
he said.
The Whiskey Gulch gold rush
in 1862 brought thousands of pros-
pectors to the Canyon City and
John Day area. About nine years
later, Chinese immigrants opened
a store called Kam Wah Chung,
translated as Golden Flower of Pros-
perity.
About 2,000 Chinese men lived
in the “Tiger Town” part of John
Day by 1885. Two Chinese immi-
grants bought the Kam Wah Chung
business in 1888 and expanded it
into a grocery, dry goods store and
clinic.
Ing “Doc” Hay made diagnoses
using pulsology and offered herbal
medicine to the burgeoning Chinese
population as an alternative to West-
ern medicine. Lung On, who spoke
both Chinese and English, ran the
general store and facilitated com-
munication between Chinese and
American settlers.
In 1967, while surveying for a
new park, John Day city staff dis-
covered the ownership deed. When
volunteers opened the long-closed
building, they found the interior just
as it was in 1955, with food in the
kitchen, a stock of dry goods and
medicinal herbs and Hay’s tools on
the apothecary table.
County is a patchwork quilt of
different companies utilizing
copper phone lines, optical fi-
ber cable and satellite, Green
said. Some communities, such
as Prairie City and Mt. Ver-
non, have a good fiber infra-
structure and residents there
don’t see a need to improve
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Possible sites include the west
side of the Seventh Street Sports
Complex and on the former Or-
egon Pine mill site north of the
John Day River. Both sites could
be accessed by the proposed Sev-
enth Street extension, which would
run west from the sports complex
neighborhood through the pro-
posed Innovation Gateway project
to Patterson Bridge Road.
Options so far discussed by the
steering committee range from
an outdoor pool similar in size
to the Gleason Pool to an indoor
aquatics facility offering warm
water and cold water pools, Green
told the Eagle. Construction costs
could range from $4 million to
nearly $15 million depending on
features. All options so far include
a six-lane 25-yard pool with 3,670
square feet of deck space provid-
ing spectator seating for about 200
people.
“Not every option includes an
indoor pool because of the expect-
ed operations and maintenance
costs to operate a year-round fa-
cility,” Green told the Eagle. “Out-
door pools are far more affordable
and a closer fit with our projected
budget.”
The goal is to create year-round
recreation opportunities that are
affordable to build and maintain,
Green said.
“Our guiding principle has been
that we have to present a viable op-
tion to replace the current pool, not
one that is too expensive to build
or that we can’t afford to operate,”
Green told the Eagle.
Bond election
The steering committee and
consultants, along with the city’s
community advisory committee,
will select one option that will be
presented in a bond election to vot-
ers. Green told the Eagle that de-
tails on the bond request have not
yet been developed, but he told the
council that the city will need to
make the “best pitch” possible to
the public.
“We are working within a bud-
internet access, while other
areas have poor service or no
access at all, he said.
Town halls
The board agreed to spend
up to $20,000 for logo ideas
and marketing support from
ECONorthwest, a consulting
firm hired by John Day to
help develop a comprehen-
sive economic development
strategy for the city, and Bell
& Funk, a marketing agency
working with ECONorth-
west.
Funded by state and feder-
al grants, the city plans to hold
several town hall meetings
as part of the public process
for developing the economic
strategy. The coalition could
piggyback onto one of the
town hall meetings next year,
Green suggested.
The board also reviewed
plans for the coalition’s Dec.
18 town hall meeting at the
Grant County Regional Air-
port. The board had hoped
to know if the coalition was
awarded a $3 million federal
Community Connect grant
by then, but there was still
no word from Washington,
Green said.
The meeting would start as
a work session for the board
and expand from that, Green
said. A variety of internet
companies providing DSL,
fiber and satellite service
would be invited, along with
get that would allow the capital
cost of the facility to be bond-fund-
ed at or near our current tax rates
(after the expiration of the hospi-
tal bond),” Green told the council.
“The operating costs for the facili-
ty will vary depending on the size
and types of amenities included
and will be reviewed along with
the capital costs.”
The pool decision should not
interfere with plans to sell the
Gleason Pool site and other city
property near Kam Wah Chung to
the state, Green told the council.
He also noted that the new aquatic
facility should be a county facili-
ty, not a city facility, a point Grant
County Commissioner Rob Ra-
schio has made in county court.
The city of John Day original-
ly built the Gleason Pool and will
receive about $1 million from the
state from the sale of land adjoin-
ing Kam Wah Chung, so the city is
leading the talks, Green said.
“The City is funding the feasi-
bility study, but we do not intend
to build or operate the new pool,”
Green told the Eagle.
If voters approve a bond to pay
for a new pool, the city plans to
organize a representative board of
elected officials from multiple ju-
risdictions to oversee its construc-
tion and operations, Green said.
County pool
“We are leading the facility
planning because we currently own
the only public pool in the county,
but we are not set up to manage an
aquatics facility or recreation cen-
ter,” he told the Eagle. “We also
view this as a shared asset. We can
provide some funding to help kick-
start the process and do our part to
see it come to fruition, but if there
is to be a pool and recreation center
in Grant County after 2020, it will
be because the voters approved it
and we have a representative pub-
lic body to oversee its operations.”
The 20-year bond measure for
the Blue Mountain Hospital Dis-
trict will expire by 2021. Passed
in September 2000 with a vote of
1,430-1,380, the $7 million hos-
pital bond currently accounts for
about 8.6 percent of property taxes
in the county, according to the tax
assessor’s office.
The combined share of property
taxes from Grant School District 3
and the Grant County Education
Service District to support schools
is 37.5 percent. There had been talk
of Grant School District 3 seeking
a bond to build a new junior-senior
high school once the hospital bond
expired, but the district has turned
a corner on that idea, School Board
Chairwoman Chris Cronin told the
Eagle.
The reality is that the district
could not tax itself enough to pay
for a new school, and the current
school will undergo a grant-fund-
ed seismic upgrade next year, she
said. The district reached a consen-
sus before former Superintendent
Curt Shelley left to keep the facil-
ities in as good a shape as possi-
ble rather than build a new school,
Cronin said.
Cronin noted that the district
recognizes the need for a new pool
facility and will support a bond
election if needed. She said she
also sees the need for a therapy
pool for older residents.
representatives from public
agencies, he said. Green said
he planned to negotiate with
these companies at the meet-
ing.
The coalition will need to
rely on a variety of technol-
ogies to improve internet ac-
cess across the county, Green
said. Some locations — such
as isolated homes at the end
of a long dirt road — may be
served by wireless internet
because running fiber in those
cases would be cost prohibi-
tive.
ViaSat, which has been
invited to the Dec. 18 town
hall, recently won a Connect
America Fund 2 award and
will provide 10,000 high-
speed broadband connections
in Oregon. Green said his new
home in John Day will utilize
ViaSat because no fiber has
been run to that neighbor-
hood.
Grant funding
The coalition is one of 124
applicants vying for $30 mil-
lion in Community Connect
grant funding, Green said, but
Congress recently made an-
other $600 million available
for communities to close the
digital divide in rural Ameri-
ca.
With a bigger pot of fed-
eral money available, the co-
alition’s chances for future
grants should improve, Green
said. By that time, the coali-
tion will have infrastructure
in place that will strengthen
future applications, he said.
That reasoning was applied
in the board’s action vote to
move ahead with a $47,000
fiber lateral that would con-
nect the coalition’s network
hub in the John Day Fire Hall
to Grant Union Junior-Senior
High School.
Green noted that after
committing about $400,000 to
the match for the Community
Connect grant, the coalition
would still have about $1.3
million of the state appropria-
tion it received in 2017.
The lateral is a short run
that could be completed in
one day’s work, and the Grant
County Education Service
District would become the co-
alition’s first internet service
provider, Green said.
This relationship with the
district would allow the coa-
lition to connect its network
to the Oregon Fiber Partner-
ship academic infrastructure
once the backbone fiber is
run from John Day to Burns,
Green said. The district also
has agreed to host a backup
station at their building for the
new Grant County 911 dis-
patch system, Green said.
The board approved issu-
ing a request for bids for con-
struction of the lateral on Nov.
26. The engineering drawings
are complete, and the con-
struction deadline is March 1.