Ridgefield Mayor Ron Onslow will hold a live chat with Columbian readers on Friday, March 23 at 10 a.m. Come discuss the North Clark County city’s plans for economic development, among other topics.
For more background on the issues facing Ridgefield and its attractions, see business editor Gordon Oliver’s recent story: Ridgefield a city at a crossroad. (Excerpted below.)
Hammered by the recession just as the town was poised to become the metropolitan area’s next development hot spot, Ridgefield is now waiting for the boom it is certain will come again. Brash predictions of a decade ago that Ridgefield and the larger north Clark County “Discovery Corridor” would become a mini-Silicon Valley have faded. But community leaders and business boosters say Ridgefield’s easy freeway access, historic downtown and proximity to the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge invite comparisons to the Oregon cities of Wilsonville or Hillsboro, with the affluent small-town ambience of Lake Oswego or Oregon wine country’s Carlton thrown in for good measure.
‘I just think it’s a place waiting to happen,’ says Onslow, a lifelong Clark County resident who moved to the town in 2005.
