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About Seaside signal. (Seaside, Or.) 1905-current | View Entire Issue (May 27, 2016)
4A • May 27, 2016 • Seaside Signal • seasidesignal.com SignalViewpoints Missing the days of the election polling place I SEASIDE SIGNAL/SUBMITTED PHOTO Once upon a time at Seaside Golf Course. Time to ‘Par-Tee’ once again at the Seaside Golf Course O ne of the city’s historic properties is getting a save. Like others who grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, Seaside’s Phil Warmbrodt and Cassie Sweeney had fond memories of the Seaside Golf Course and its famed restaurant, the Par-Tee Dining Room. “The three premier dinner houses in the 1950s and 1960s were the Par-Tee Room, the Crab Broiler, and Harrah’s downtown,” Warmbrodt said. “They had wedding, recep- tions, prom dinners — SEEN FROM SEASIDE this was the spot.” R.J. MARX Warmbrodt and Sweeney, who also own Borland Electric in Gearhart, are the new owners of the Par-Tee and its 125 acres, including the nine-hole Seaside Golf Course. “Our goal is to revive the course because it had gone downhill so bad in the last 10 years,” Warmbrodt said. “The fi rst two weeks we’ve done nothing but clean. We just took out 18 dump trucks full of trash. Six big 30-foot containers.” Sweeney said she plans to revive the breakfast and lunch busi- ness, open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. for the restaurant with the bar open until 9 in the summer. “We’re expanding the bar with more seating, and patio with outside seating,” she said. “We have a big clientele for Sunday brunch.” Warmbrodt, 64 and Sweeney, 63, are both Seaside High School grads. They’ve owned Borland Electric in Gearhart for 23 years. They both love golf and take golf vacations when they can. But what they really want to share is the rich history of the golf course and its property. The ‘last word in elegance’ Oregon Coast historian Ellis Lucia described Ben Holladay’s Seaside House as “the last word in elegance.” Holladay, a Portland land developer and railroad builder known as the “giant of the Old West,” bought the property in 1870 and designed an Italian villa with “some 50 luxurious guest rooms, thickly-carpeted Victorian parlors, bars and lounges, game rooms and a splendid dining hall serving the fi nest cuisine in all the West.” In its heyday, the resort boasted a race track, stable of race horses, groves of trees, vast lawns and a stream with a wooden bridge. According to Lucia, “the nation’s elite —Wall Street bankers, Comstock nabobs, tycoons, congressmen, legislators fl ocked to Seaside House,” transporting them to the hotel over a road paved with clamshells. But by the 1900s Seaside House was empty. The former grand hotel was converted to a medical facility during the war. After the war, Seaside House was dismantled, making way for the Seaside Golf Course in 1923. The course was designed by a celebrity of his day, Chandler Egan, the last summer games Olympic gold-medal winner for golf, held in 1904 in St. Louis. Egan went on to settle in the Pacifi c Northwest, where he designed golf courses from Pebble Beach to Seattle, including Seaside’s. On opening day, Oregon’s state champion Clare Griswold and Rudolph Wilhelm, both of the Portland Golf Club, defeated O.F. R.J. MARX/SEASIDE SIGNAL Cassie Sweeney and Phil Warmbrodt, new owners of Seaside Golf Course. Willing of Waverly Country Club and John Rebstock of Portland “1-up.” “Some very good golf was played,” reported the July 5, 1923, Seaside Signal, “with four birdies negotiated and a number of holes brilliantly played.” Charlie Cartwright II bought the place in 1931. Cartwright was the grandson of Charles Morrison Cartwright, one of the “pioneers of 1853,” a state legislator and namesake for Seaside’s Cartwright Park. Charlie Cartwright II maintained the golf course and built the Par-Tee Room and Lounge extension in 1954. “This place was hopping, it was alive,” Sweeney said. “This was the place to go. It was the best dinner house in Seaside.” Charlie Cartwright, who died in 2003 at age 94, sold the golf course to Fred Fulmer Jr. in 1971. New owners After Fulmers’ sons Wayne and Fred III died, Fulmer’s daugh- ter Vickie sold it to the Warmbrodts this spring in a deal brokered by Cascade Sotheby’s International, Farzan Kamali and Sally Conrad. In acquiring the 125-acre property, they also acquired the old Fulmer house next door. “We were able to commandeer this with a unique deal,” Warmbrodt said. “We bought the corporation intact, which won’t take place until around June 1.” The bones of the building are “excellent,” Warmbrodt said. “It’s very sound.” Plans for the upstairs remain uncertain. “We want to get the breakfast and lunch clientele built up before we open upstairs in the Par-Tee room,” he said. Meanwhile, the couple is moving next door with the former Cartwright house next to the putting green. “It kind of just happened,” Sweeney said. “We were just getting ready to go to Tucson. We’re a little tired, but we’re loving it.” “It’s way more than what we anticipated, but we brought Borland’s back to success,” Warmbrodt said. “We want to make it alive again,” Sweeney added. “For peo- ple to enjoy it. To make it hopping.” had a stimulating conversation one Friday with Alex Dennon. It turns out he was the son of my once neighbor and babysitter, Jean Raitanen Dennon whom many people know as their favorite hairdresser. Alex had discovered a few things in my book, which he wanted to know more about and that’s always fl attering. We seemed to have a lot in common (I thought) and he gave me a SCENE & HEARD couple of his books CLAIRE LOVELL to read — one quite a daunting 1070 pages. Yikes! Talk about homework. Alex also fi gured out several more ways the nines were signifi cant in my life. I’ll have to ask him to write them down. As one who has always been interested in spelling, grammar and English usage, I’m usually on the lookout for mistakes in the written word. Especially in books, maga- zines, newspapers or signs in the workplace. Recently I saw one that said “Whole Karnal Corn.” Could that be a dirty joke? My kids are especially aware of the use of the apos- trophe. There are many times, visible around town when the sign says “it’s” although a possessive is implied. (Yes, “it’s” means “it is.”) Most often the apostrophe should be left out. Around my neighborhood while work continues on Holladay, there’s often the smell of natural gas. Ugh. The gas man can’t fi nd it on his meter, which he says, is thousands of something-or-other more sensitive than my nose, but I don’t buy it. He can’t get a reading. Ah, well. A stink by any other name would smell the same. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a voter’s pamphlet before a person gets their ballot? It’s almost impossible to know who’s available for commit- tee person or even to fi gure a choice among candidates for judge, but it would be great to have a mini-bio instead of the eeny-meeny-miney-mo method of selection. I hate vote by mail. I like the idea of going to the polls and getting a sticker for having done my duty. Yes, it probably costs more but lots of places still do it. It’s one more piece of America we’ve tossed by the wayside. My visiting nephew Mike Wharton from California left me a message to pass on. He spent two or three days digging clams on the low tides early in the morning. At that time, he said around 5:30 to 6:30 a.m., the restrooms at the beach were not unlocked and ready for visitors. I would think that on his early rounds, whoever’s job it is to make the restrooms available — a police offi cer or city employee — should do it early enough that visitors will not be incon- venienced. Men sometimes fi nd the waiting more diffi cult. How disappointing to learn that the Seaside High School centennial celebration had come and gone without my being aware of it. I was waiting for an announcement sometime in the future if there was one, I missed it. As a member of the Class of ’37, I may not have been able to go, age having its imponderables, but I would have loved the idea of consider- ing it since my kind no longer has class reunions. Life does throw us its little curves. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a voter’s pamphlet before a person gets their ballot? Laugh Lines: Q: What kind of a dinosaur has an extensive vocabulary? A: A Thesaurus. (Courtesy of Dana Perino) First verse of a poem “To Whom it May Concern.” “You goofy guys without your ties have prompted my confessing; you think it’s smart but I impart you left home without dressing.” Final thoughts next week. Big improvements in county’s library system L ibraries in Clatsop County have been in the news quite a bit lately. The City of Warrenton just discovered that their library has structural issues, and the Astoria Public Library has been working on a plan for their new or renovated building over the past year and a half. Personally, I am very excited that these are times where the Warrenton and Astoria libraries can plan toward even better libraries than what they currently offer. The opportunities before the city of Astoria and the city of Warrenton are bigger and better, to build new library community centers that have lasting impact for future generations. It is amazing the myth that contin- ues to circulate that libraries are dying in America. If you were in charge of a fast food place and you sold 135,000 burgers every year for a population of 6,500 people, would you say your restaurants was obsolete and in danger of being replaced? The Seaside Public Library checks out 135,000 items an- nually, and the door count on our main doors is over 200,000 per year, yet I constantly get asked when libraries are PUBLISHER EDITOR Steve Forrester R.J. Marx BETWEEN THE COVERS ESTHER MOBERG going away. I think the problem may be that non-library users equate librar- ies with dusty books sitting in a dim building where a starched librarian on a tall stool peers over her glasses at you. This is the opposite of the Seaside Library. Today, we had four classes from local schools visit the library and participate in story times. We had events in our community room includ- ing government assistance programs. About 50 people used our computer center, looking up job resources and checking their e-mail. People helped themselves to the paperback exchange or browsed the library bookstore. Last week we had a large group learning to use the ukulele at a library program, and on June 2 we will have a very special presentation on World War II that will tie in with an exhibit hosted in the main part of the Seaside Public Library. Personal fl ags carried by Japa- nese soldiers in world war two will be returned to their families in Japan as part of the process of healing wounds from World War II. This is just a small sampling of the range of programs, ex- periences, and resources to be found in your local library that are unmatched by any other program or center. I thought fi ve years ago that by 2020 most books would no longer be available in paper form, but now I think it’s going to take a couple decades, if ever. The truth is, constant screen time on e-readers is not some- thing the majority of people enjoy, even in the younger generations. Typ- ically the use of E-Readers continues to be seen as a lightweight alternative to lugging around a library of books. Most people who have E-Readers or read on their smartphone also have a collection of books in paper as well. Reading is the main thing, not the for- mat. When e-books fi rst came out over a decade ago, most librarians were prepared to see book usage steadily decline while digital books increased. We have seen a huge increase in digital ADVERTISING MANAGER PRODUCTION MANAGER CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Claire Lovell Jon Rahl Esther Moberg Katherine Lacaze Eve Marx Betty Smith John D. Bruijn CIRCULATION MANAGER SYSTEMS MANAGER Heather Ramsdell Carl Earl ADVERTISING SALES Betty Smith Brandy Stewart book use, and in the fi rst few years digital book usage grew astronomi- cally, but paper format has not gone away as was expected and if anything, continues to be in demand. Teaching kids to read on e-readers means increased screen time and chil- dren will be less likely to connect with the books they are reading because of the detachment from the paper form, while young developing eyes will be under more strain from screen time. In fact, e-readers and tablets have been demonstrated to add to distraction that learning using a paper form textbook does not. Students in college have actually found that using textbooks on a tablet or laptop leads to less focused time studying and most prefer a paper textbook still, even in a generation that hasn’t known life before e-readers. Of course, there is no simple solu- tion and no one answer to the complex questions of libraries and the perfect service models. The wisest thing we can do is to continue to look at each individual community to make sure we provide for as many of the needs as budget and staffi ng allow. Seaside Signal Letter policy The Seaside Signal is published every other week by EO Media Group, 1555 N. Roosevelt, Seaside, OR 97138. 503-738-5561 seasidesignal.com The Seaside Signal welcomes letters to the editor. The deadline is noon Monday prior to publication. Letters must be 400 words or less and must be signed by the author and include a phone number for verifi cation. We also request that submissions be limited to one letter per month. Send to 1555 N. Roosevelt Drive, Seaside, OR 97138, drop them off at 1555 N. Roosevelt Drive or fax to 503-738-9285. Or email rmarx@seasidesignal.com At your local library, you can check out 20-50 books a week, and return them for free. If you checked out 25-50 books, movies, and CDS, every 2 weeks and read them, you would have had access to a library of 1,250 items in a year, with a value of about $18,750. You wouldn’t have had to store them in your house, and you could browse many other books, CDs, and DVDs while selecting the ones you preferred. The piece people don’t seem to get that don’t use the library is how much is available to them at little or no personal cost in a library. They get full internet access, resources, databases, music, movies, eBooks, and audiobooks and they aren’t expected to pay thousands of dollars in return. Your piece of supporting the library is a small amount in return on the value you actually receive. The Seaside, As- toria, and Warrenton Libraries are well used and well-loved. Use your library, send people to the library, and discover for yourself that libraries are still the best place to get the best value in items and resources for everyone from one month to 100 years old. SUBSCRIPTIONS Annually: $40.50 in county • $58.00 in and out of county • e-Edition: only $30.00 POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Seaside Signal, P.O. Box 210, Astoria, OR 97103. Postage Paid at Seaside, OR 97138 and at additional mailing offi ces. Copyright 2015 © by the Seaside Signal. No portion of this newspaper may be re-produced without written permission. All rights reserved.