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About Seaside signal. (Seaside, Or.) 1905-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 13, 2019)
OUR 112th Year September 13, 2019 SEASIDESIGNAL.COM $1.00 On time and under budget for convention center By R.J. MARX Seaside Signal Gary Henley Gulls cheerleaders show their stuff in the team’s home opener. CHEERLEADERS ARE READY FOR THE NEXT LEVEL On June 4, 2018, the Seaside Civic and Con- vention Center kicked off its $15 million ren- ovation and expansion project with a ground- breaking ceremony. Fifteen months later, the center’s general manager Russ Vandenberg welcomed residents, visitors and dignitaries to a ribbon-cutting and reopening celebration Thursday. The center, built in 1970, was created to bring in business to Seaside in the winter and shoul- der seasons to help build the economy, Vanden- berg told an audience of several hundred. After expansion in 1990 and renovation in 1995, talks for a new expansion project began in 2011. This year, the convention center came through its “biggest facelift ever,” Vandenberg said. “We heard from clients over and over again,” Vandenberg said. “‘You need to build a bigger facility or we’re going to have to move to a larger facility.’ And we paid attention, and got busy and started building a plan to expand. Eight years later, we’re giving them what they asked for.” See Remodel, Page A8 Moratorium on VRD permits sought By R.J. MARX Seaside Signal Katherine Lacaze Seaside property owners Karen and Todd Van Horne are asking for a reversal of a planning department decision to grant a vacation home permit in their Ninth Avenue neighborhood, and for a moratorium on future permits in Seaside. The Van Hornes appeared before the Plan- ning Commission Tuesday, Sept. 3, after home- owner Jerry Johnson received approval for a conditional-use request for a four-bedroom vacation rental dwelling permit at 403 Ninth Ave. in Seaside. “This is excessive and beyond city guide- lines,” the Van Hornes wrote in their Aug. 14 appeal, delivered to the commission on Tues- day night. “The increased traffic, parking, dis- turbance issues we have witnessed in the past five years has grown exponentially with the overgrowth of VRDs.” The Van Hornes say there are already too many vacation rental dwellings in their neigh- borhood and want to see the decision reversed. In presenting his appeal of the conditional use permit on Ninth Avenue, Todd Van Horne asked Seaside to place limits of the percentage of vacation rentals, similar to rules in place in Lincoln City, Cannon Beach, or Gearhart. Existing vacation rental dwellings exceed the city’s 20% maximum distribution require- ment within the surrounding 100-foot area, they said in their appeal. While owner Jerry Johnson of the Ninth Avenue property was out of the country, prop- erty manager Erin Barker argued the reason they were granted their conditional use permit was that vacation rental density area was 15%, not above 20%, which would have required Planning Commission review. “I’d like to see the statistics that says we got the math wrong,” Barker said. Acknowledging problems associated with some properties, commissioners fell short of endorsing a moratorium on VRD permits, as requested by the Van Hornes. Seaside High School junior Jessica Hernandez (from left), junior Annabelle Long, senior Sydney Rapp, a senior, and sophomore Lexi Czupofski work on a cheer routine during practice Sept. 4. See Rentals, Page A8 By KATHERINE LACAZE For Seaside Signal S easide High School’s cheerleading squad is looking forward to another year of sup- porting the various athletic teams and clubs on campus, in addition to resuming their participa- tion in the competitive side of the sport. “We’re big advocates of making sure all our activities feel supported,” said Kimm Mount, who started as assis- tant coach in 2012 before taking over as head coach the following year. Cheerleading — which is considered an Oregon School Activities Asso- ciation certified activity because of the limited num- ber of contests entailed – picked up in spring, when interested students started attending a variety of boot camps and exercises to pre- pare for the season. Requiring the students to sign up and commit to prac- ticing in the late spring and summer — at which time they also purchase a uniform — gives them “incentive, if See Cheerleaders, Page A6 Lewis and Clark expedition returns to Seaside By R.J. MARX Seaside Signal For the Lewis and Clark Salt Makers setting up the Cove, this weekend they are going to party like it’s winter 1805. About a half-dozen members of the living historians will be recreating this historical event Saturday and Sunday during the Lewis and Clark Salt Makers program, put on by the Seaside Museum and Historical Soci- ety. On the beach off Avenue U in Seaside, the program takes place close to the actual histori- cal site where the Corps of Dis- covery encamped making salt more than 200 years ago. “In the corps I was a hunter, a miller by trade,” Travis Fedje said in the role of Private John Potts. “I’m a fairly good trader, competent as a boatman — I ran the rapids at the Cascades. I can get by.” Others on the beach setting up last Friday included mem- bers of the Corps of Discovery William Bratton, Joseph White- house, John Collins and Rob- ert Frazier, played, respectively R.J. Marx See Lewis and Clark, Page A8 Lewis and Clark Salt Makers demonstrate the techniques used by the Corps of Discovery in the winter of 1805-06 in Seaside.