WEDNESDAY, MAY 18, 2016
HERMISTONHERALD.COM • A3
COMMUNITY
First EOTEC building open for business
By JADE McDOWELL
Staff Writer
It was a party at the
Eastern Oregon Trade and
Event Center on Friday as
curious community mem-
bers mingled with civic
leaders who helped estab-
lish EOTEC to celebrate
the opening of the center’s
irst building.
“Today is a day to cele-
brate and say thank you,”
Mayor David Drotzmann
said as he welcomed the
group.
Although Drotzmann is
involved in EOTEC today
as a fundraising commit-
tee member and mayor,
he said it was important
to acknowledge the long
line of people who worked
to make EOTEC a reality
long before he took of-
ice — people like Tom
Harper, who as Hermiston
city manager 30 years ago
helped the city purchase
the land where EOTEC
now sits.
“These gentlemen had
the vision,” he said.
EOTEC has had its
challenges,
Drotzmann
said, and its detractors. But
any community should be
thrilled to have a $16 mil-
lion investment with no
debt to pay off.
Larry Givens, Umatil-
la County commissioner,
said he was nervous when
the county signed away
the current fair and ro-
deo grounds to Hermiston
School District in 2012,
but Hermiston is a “can-do
community” that has made
it work.
State Sen. Bill Hansell
was a Umatilla County
commissioner when the
county irst decided it
wanted to move the fair
from the center of Hermis-
ton. He said the $8 million
that eventually came from
the state was helped along
by the fact that Hermiston
was a “visionary com-
munity” and the Umatilla
County Fair is one of the
best county fairs in the
state.
As community members
cheered the opening of the
event center, city manager
and EOTEC chair Byron
Smith said he hoped the
open house was the irst in a
series of celebrations as the
EOTEC project continues
to move toward hosting the
2017 Umatilla County Fair
and Farm-City Pro Rodeo.
The
building
that
opened Friday is just one
component of the over-
all EOTEC project. When
complete, EOTEC will
also feature three large
barns, a rodeo arena, food
stalls, RV parking and ex-
tensive green space — all
yet to be built.
According to Rob Dri-
er of Frew Development
Group, the EOTEC board
should have bids in hand
for construction of the
barns by mid-June. He told
the EOTEC board during
their Friday morning busi-
ness meeting there have
already been contractors
who expressed an interest
in the project.
A swine barn and “fur
and feathers” barn will run
about 15,500 square feet
each and a third barn al-
most three times that size
will host horses and cattle.
The rodeo arena is still
under design, and Drier
said it will probably be
another three weeks be-
fore bid documents are
complete. He said the bid
package will include var-
ious add-on options that
the board can price out for
before deciding whether
there is money in the bud-
get.
The original design
work was done by local
designer Jim Michaels.
But in March, Drier asked
the board to hire a second
architectural irm to help
inish the drawings to the
standard needed. Since
October, the board had
been told that the drawings
would be inished in Feb-
ruary.
George Anderson, a
Hermiston attorney who
has provided pro bono le-
gal services to EOTEC,
expressed frustration with
the continued delays, say-
ing during Friday’s meet-
ing that as a private citizen
he was “mystiied” that it
had taken so many months
to complete designs for the
barns and the rodeo arena.
“You’ve got contractors
here, you need to light a
ire under them,” he said.
Smith said he under-
stood the frustration, but
there were a lot of factors
at play.
“We’re trying to make
this happen, but this is
not a straightforward one-
group project,” he said.
“It’s a community project
that requires a lot of input
from different groups, and
that has impacted the time-
line tremendously.”
Anderson said he un-
derstood that, but he felt
the board shouldn’t be
afraid to apply pressure on
contractors and Frew De-
velopment Group to work
faster.
Various smaller bid
packages will also need to
be completed in time for
the 2017 Umatilla Coun-
ty Fair and Farm-City Pro
Rodeo. Food stalls, re-
strooms, fencing, site light-
ing, a public address sys-
tem, signs and landscaping
are still in the works.
Some items have not
been put out to bid yet,
and others are being done
in pieces. A request for
proposals for signs for the
site, for example, did not
receive any bids and so the
board is buying different
types of signs from various
vendors instead.
The fencing bid was is-
sued but then canceled af-
ter contractors complained
it was too hard to give a
price per foot when they
didn’t know how much
fencing or what types of
fencing was needed. The
board now plans to issue
a request for proposals for
the 1.25 miles of chain link
fence needed to inish en-
closing the entire EOTEC
grounds, then add decora-
tive and interior fencing
later.
Water continues to be a
challenge for EOTEC. A
single shallow well is cur-
rently providing the site’s
water, but it won’t be
enough for irrigation once
all of the planned green
space is seeded.
Smith said that a second
well would be dug soon.
He said a nearby compa-
ny has expressed an inter-
est in selling deep water
rights to EOTEC, but he
is still working with them
to overcome legal hurdles.
If those hurdles prove too
much, Smith said a sec-
STAFF PHOTO BY E.J. HARRIS
Umatilla County Fair Princess JaNessa Prewitt, right, greets visitors to the Eastern Oregon Trade and Event Center during an
open house Friday in Hermiston.
STAFF PHOTO BY E.J. HARRIS
EOTEC board member Dan Dorran, right, gives a tour of the
front ofice of the Eastern Oregon Trade and Event Center
during an open house Friday in Hermiston.
Hermiston Mayor Dave Drotzmann speaks during an open
house for the Eastern Oregon Trade and Event Center on
Friday in Hermiston.
facility rentals while also
adding up costs, questions
about EOTEC’s opera-
tions budget continue to
be mostly answered with:
“We don’t know yet.”
Umatilla County and
the city of Hermiston plan
to split evenly any subsi-
dy needed for operating
costs. They contributed
$25,000 each during the
current iscal year but ex-
pect to need a bigger con-
tribution as the project
opens for business.
The operating budget
includes a salary for busi-
ness manager Heather
Cannell, who is running
day-to-day
operations
STAFF PHOTO BY E.J. HARRIS
Visitors to the Eastern Oregon Trade and Event Center both
coming and going during an open house Friday in Hermiston.
ond option would involve
switching the property
from the Stanield Irriga-
tion District to the Hermis-
ton Irrigation District and
using some of their water.
“We haven’t closed the
door on that,” he said.
Until the full EOTEC
project is up and running,
pulling in revenue from
such as booking events.
On Friday the board
agreed that since the event
center building is open,
they will need to have
some sort of receptionist
to greet visitors and an-
swer phones when Cannell
is not on site.
Even though work still
needs to be completed
on the rest of EOTEC,
the event center will start
hosting events immediate-
ly. Cannell said bookings
so far include seven pri-
vate events and a variety
of meetings, including a
League of Oregon Cities
gathering scheduled for
today.
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