A change is coming.
Maybe it’ll come from the casino that the Cowlitz Indian Tribe has spent six years trying to build just across the freeway from this well-kept town of 2,545.
• Population: 2,545.
• Biggest draw: Typically reports the county’s lowest crime rate per resident.
• Biggest downside: No supermarket.
• Must see: La Center Bottoms wildlife site, Sternwheeler Park, cardrooms.
• Web site: http://www.ci.lacenter.wa.us
Maybe it’ll come from the new shops and offices that the city last year won the right to build along Interstate 5, which Mayor Jim Irish calls the “river of commerce.”
Who knows? This onetime steamboat stop along an older river of commerce — the East Fork of the Lewis River — might even get its first supermarket.
• Population: 2,545.
• Biggest draw: Typically reports the county's lowest crime rate per resident.
• Biggest downside: No supermarket.
• Must see: La Center Bottoms wildlife site, Sternwheeler Park, cardrooms.
• Web site: <a href="http://www.ci.lacenter.wa.us">http://www.ci.lacenter.wa.us</a>
As heads into its second century, La Center has found a niche as a cute, friendly bedroom town, its public services kept well-fed by taxes on the four cardrooms that came to town in the 1980s. Today, the cardrooms account for 73 percent of the city’s general revenue.
Even though a 2008 Supreme Court ruling put the Cowlitz casino plan on ice, it’s still the big issue in town. The highway intersection, for all its potential, won’t develop without a new sewer line, and that’ll cost millions — but the tribe has offered to pitch in, if the city wants.
Some favor negotiating with the tribe. Some don’t. Others wish the city council would spend more time talking about a new senior center or youth center.
Generally speaking, though, life in La Center is quiet and happy, with some of Clark County’s slowest crime rates and lowest property taxes.
The biggest story of its 100th year might have been the day middle school principal David Cooke walked around town dressed as Batman, the result of a bet that his students couldn’t raise more than $5,000 for Doernbecher Children’s Hospital.
Home ownership in La Center is 86 percent; if you’re looking for a rental, you’re more likely to land in Woodland, the neon-lit hamlet six miles up the highway.
La Center doesn’t even have a stoplight. City planner Dale Miller thinks they’re overused, and everybody seems to like Dale enough to follow his advice.
