VOL. 42, ISSUE 9
WWW.CANNONBEACHGAZETTE.COM
MAY 4, 2018
After five years, South Wind still a blueprint
Site in Cannon Beach
could be school, shelter
By Brenna Visser
Cannon Beach Gazette
COLIN MURPHEY/THE DAILY ASTORIAN
The site of the proposed school is overgrown and has lim-
ited access.
Almost five years after being pur-
chased by Cannon Beach, the 55-acre
lot commonly called South Wind re-
mains vacant.
The land, bought with the intention
of relocating the elementary school and
other essential services out of the tsu-
nami inundation zone, is now inundat-
ed with Scotch broom and fraught with
community confusion. Little money has
been set aside in the city’s budget for
development. Master plans, which out-
line where essential city services would
go, sit on the shelf, leaving residents
wondering: What progress has been
made?
“Progress? Well, considering it hasn’t
gone forward at all, that’s easy to an-
swer,” Mayor Sam Steidel said.
Practical roadblocks, such as high
cost estimates for utilities and highway
improvements, are still giving the city
sticker shock. With the Seaside School
District focusing on a campus reloca-
tion project in Seaside, receiving any
type of district funding for a building
for the Cannon Beach Academy, a new
charter school, is a long shot.
But the real stalemate is derived
from disagreements on the City Coun-
cil about what should be built at South
Wind, and how financially involved the
city should be with building anything
related to the school — disagreements
that make development of anything in
the near future unlikely.
See South Wind, Page 6A
COLIN MURPHEY/THE DAILY ASTORIAN
Bowls are set up at a location at Cannon
Beach City Hall to collect water dripping
from the ceiling.
Cannon Beach
explores
options for a
new city hall
Tsunami inundation,
structural worries
BRENNA VISSER/CANNON BEACH GAZETTE
A group of Fire Mountain School students blow ink onto paper as a part of a communal art project called “Seeing the
Coastal Edge through Children’s Eyes” on Tuesday.
ON THE COASTAL EDGE
Fire Mountain School
students inspired by
conservation effort
By Brenna Visser
Cannon Beach Gazette
A
RCH CAPE — Students at Fire
Mountain School will make their
debut at the Cannon Beach Arts
Association this month with art in-
spired by the environment around them.
With straws in hand, students on
Tuesday collaborated on an ink portrait
of a tree. Nicole Poole, a supporter of
Fire Mountain School and artist, would
drop a splash off ink on the page, which
the students would then blow on to
create a tendril-like design resembling
branches of a tree. Others sat at differ-
ent stations, drawing portraits of their
favorite Pacific Northwest animals and
plants. The students, ranging in age
from preschool to fifth grade, have also
been creating temporary artwork in the
forest and on the beach, inspired by the
site-specific work of British sculptor
Andy Goldsworthy.
The multiday art project was inspired
by the idea of “seeing the coastal edge
through children’s eyes,” said North
Coast Land Conservancy Executive Di-
rector and Fire Mountain School parent
Katie Voelke. Part of the goal of this
project is raise awareness of the conser-
vancy’s fundraising effort to conserve
the 3,500-acre Rainforest Reserve and
Coastal Edge area near Arch Cape.
“NCLC asked the students at Fire
Mountain School if they would be
willing to share their artwork with the
community to inspire them to conserve
the Coastal Edge, and they said they
would,” said Volke.
Fire Mountain School administra-
tor Faith Deur said the project fits into
the school’s larger vision of encourag-
ing place-based learning, a philosophy
that encourages the work children do in
school to have real world applications.
“You’re not going from worksheet to
worksheet. If you’re able to do some-
thing real, something for the community,
then it promotes a kind of civic-minded-
ness,” Deur said.
About 30 different art pieces should
be produced inspired by the coastal edge
by the time the project is over. Deur said
she hopes those who come see the work
on display will have a chance to see the
property “through the yes of the chil-
dren, and to find value in it.”
The exhibition will be at the Cannon
Beach Arts Association gallery on Fri-
day, May 18 and Saturday, May 19. A
reception will be held Saturday from 10
a.m. to noon.
‘IF YOU’RE ABLE TO DO SOMETHING REAL, SOMETHING FOR THE COMMUNITY,
THEN IT PROMOTES A KIND OF CIVIC-MINDEDNESS.’
PAID
PERMIT NO. 97
ASTORIA, OR
PRSRT STD
US POSTAGE
— Faith Deur, Fire Mountain School administrator
Groups celebrate 12 days for our planet
Aquarium, conservancy
among those helping to raise
environmental awareness
By R.J. Marx
Cannon Beach Gazette
As the annual Earth Day Parade made its way down
Hemlock, nearby downtown, Nancy Holmes and Betsy
Ayres of the North Coast Land Conservancy, Lisa Ha-
becker of the Haystack Rock Awareness Program and
Keith Chandler, Tiffany Boothe and Daphne Hoth of the
Seaside Aquarium hosted booths and distributed liter-
ature. The event was part of the April 11 to April 22
celebration of Earth Day.
The aquarium drew crowds with treasures garnered
after a recent “upwelling,” what they call an ocean burp.
Prize among them were live squid egg capsules,
floating in water and holding between 180 and 300 eggs
each, with six to eight weeks before they hatch.”
The casings must remain in water or they’ll dry out
“pretty quickly,” Boothe said.
R.J. MARX/CANNON BEACH GAZETTE
Tiffany Boothe and Daphne Hoth of the Seaside
Aquarium brought live sea samples to Cannon Beach.
If you see them and throw them back, take them out
a little deeper or they’ll wash back in to shore.
Can you eat them?
“I know of one person who ate one capsule,” Boothe
said. “He seemed to enjoy it. He lived.”
By Brenna Visser
Cannon Beach Gazette
Poor conditions at Cannon Beach City
Hall are a long-running joke.
In the back room, small bowls are lined
up on a counter to catch water leaking from
a roof that is 70 years old. A cheeky note
is taped to a jar, asking for donations to re-
place the roof.
Because much of the building is built
on sand and sawdust, the front lobby floor
is at a slant, distorting Finance Director
Laurie Sawrey’s door frame so much she
can’t close her door. Her ceiling bends from
the weight of stor-
age upstairs, making ‘I USED TO
her office one of the
most vulnerable in an LAUGH
earthquake.
ALONG, BUT
“I used to laugh
along, but honestly, HONESTLY,
it’s pretty serious,” IT’S PRETTY
Sawrey said.
The joke could be SERIOUS.’
coming to an end.
The City Council Laurie Sawrey
is looking at a bond finance director
within the next few
years to replace the building, and directed
city staff Wednesday, April 18, to consid-
er money to conduct surveys and cost esti-
mates in next year’s budget.
Issues surrounding City Hall have been
documented for more than a decade. In
many ways, the building — with no fire
safety system or smoke detection — doesn’t
meet city code.
In 2009, a tsunami-resistant building de-
sign was created, but never implemented.
Multiple remodeling plans to fix perpetual
issues like air ventilation and structural de-
fects have been drawn up and shelved due
to high costs and lack of feasibility.
A report by Tolovana Architects found
the building — a former lumber yard —
was never intended for this amount of use
and is “simply not able to be remodeled in
an economic manner as compared to con-
structing a new facility.”
Conversations about replacing City Hall
resurfaced at the urging of City Manager
Bruce St. Denis, who has concerns about
the building in a tsunami or earthquake.
As it stands, the building would be vulner-
able to a minor seismic event or a medi-
um-to-large sized tsunami.
“I’m looking at this from an emergency
management perspective. If we want to have
this building if something happens, I don’t
know that we can rely on it,” St. Denis said.
In late April, St. Denis asked city coun-
cilors to consider going out for a bond as
early as November. Preliminary estimates
suggest replacing the building would cost
roughly $5 million.
While city councilors unanimously
agreed City Hall should be replaced, they
shied away from an immediate bond option.
“We need to have more organically
grown public opinion,” City Councilor
Nancy McCarthy said.
See City Hall, Page 6A