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State of the County: ‘Stronger every day’
Clark County’s “future is bright, and we’re growing stronger every day,” Councilor David Madore said Thursday, touting job growth, the integration of county Medicaid systems and the proposed east county bridge as signs of the region’s growth.
Bearing his familiar “JOBS” pin, the council chairman spoke to a crowd of about 150 people at the 29th annual State of the County address at Skyview High School. Fellow Councilors Tom Mielke and Jeanne Stewart also spoke, as well as Sheriff Chuck Atkins, Acting County Manager Mark McCauley and Todd Coleman, chief executive officer of the Port of Vancouver.
Clark County’s growing economy and public services were the themes for the evening.
All but completely absent, however, were mentions of the council’s transition following the approval of the home rule charter in November. McCauley briefly mentioned the charter, thanking the council and staff for supporting him in his new position as county manager.
Citing a recent job report from Scott Bailey, regional labor economist for the state Employment Security Department, Madore said Clark County added 6,200 jobs in 2014 and had an annualized growth rate of 4.4 percent. That rate surpasses Washington and Oregon’s rates of 3.4 and 3.5 percent, respectively.
Learn more about the State of the County.
After a legal battle stretching more than a decade, the Cowlitz Indian Tribe has secured the reservation it needs to build a casino near La Center.
Monday, the regional director for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Stanley Speaks, signed the final documents to immediately establish the tribe’s first-ever reservation. The federal secretary of the interior has acquired the 152-acre property in Clark County on behalf of the tribe, which has been federally recognized since 2000. The land was already owned by Cowlitz tribal interests.
“After 160 years of longing for a reservation within our aboriginal lands, I welcome all Cowlitz people to come home,” Cowlitz Tribe Chairman Bill Iyall stated in a press release. “We are no longer a landless tribe. … The Cowlitz reservation offers new opportunities in our aboriginal land and the community which the tribe will deliver from generations to come.”
The tribe plans to build a 134,000-square-foot casino along Interstate 5 west of La Center, plus a 250-room hotel and space for shopping and dining. The first phase of the massive project will produce at least 3,000 construction jobs for 18 to 24 months, Iyall said Monday. The new casino will provide about 1,500 permanent jobs when its doors open, he said.
Read more about the reservation.
Tech firm Wacom to move from Vancouver to Portland
Digital pen maker Wacom, long a flagship of Clark County’s technology sector, said Thursday that it will move its headquarters for the Americas from Vancouver to Portland’s Pearl District next spring.
The Japan-based company, which makes digital pens and pads used by illustrators, animators and industrial designers, said it will relocate nearly all of its 160 employees to Portland. There, the company will occupy the top three floors of a nine-story building now under construction at Northwest 14th Avenue and Irving Street in the Pearl District. The company also will operate a ground-level retail store at the new location, said Doug Little, Wacom’s senior public relations manager.
The new office will provide 55,000 square feet, an increase from the company’s present headquarters at 1311 S.E. Cardinal Court in Vancouver, Little said.
About five employees will remain in Vancouver, providing return and repair services to the company’s customers, Little said. The company has based its Americas operations in Vancouver since 1989.
The relocation decision was made by the company’s global managers, who wanted to be “closer to the center of creativity,” Little said.
Read more about Wacom’s move to Portland.
What began as an expected step by the Port of Vancouver toward helping rejuvenate Vancouver’s waterfront swerved Tuesday into a skirmish between port commissioners and project developer Barry Cain over Cain’s opposition to building a rail-to-marine oil transfer terminal at the port.
Commissioners Nancy Baker, Jerry Oliver and Brian Wolfe voted unanimously to approve selling small pieces of land to Columbia Waterfront LLC, which plans to conduct a larger $1.3 billion residential/commercial redevelopment of the 32-acre waterfront site.
The approval will allow the company, which has leased property from the port at Terminal 1 since 2007, to proceed with full-block construction on two future blocks near the new Esther Street alignment.
Before the approval, however, commissioners lashed out against Cain, president of Tualatin, Ore.-based Gramor Development — a member, along with local investors, of Columbia Waterfront — who attended the commission’s public meeting Tuesday.
Directing a question to the port’s CEO, Todd Coleman, Wolfe asked why the port keeps “doing business with a group that’s antagonistic towards us?” It was a reference to Cain’s public opposition to the plan by Tesoro Corp. and Savage Cos. to build a transfer facility capable of handling an average 360,000 barrels of crude per day at the port.
Read more about the Port’s disagreement.
If you feed them, they will come. And stay. And get wasted, urinate, litter, fight, vandalize the place and intimidate people going to the farmers market, or a concert, or the kid-friendly fountain for some good clean fun.
That’s Daniel Mitchell’s bird’s-eye view of homeless people in Esther Short Park from his condo in the Parkview building at VancouverCenter, where he lives with his girlfriend and their dogs. He also operates an engineering business near the northwest corner of the park, and he’s looking to open Sporting Systems, an upscale firearms shop, in the same area.
“I’ve got the park bracketed,” he said. “We walk a lot, we ride our bikes. We take some walks pretty late at night. We see it all.”
Mitchell has lived downtown for 15 years. He watched closely while the city transformed a badly blighted spot through new construction, landscaping and lots of new programming and activities. Esther Short Park was named one of 10 Great Public Spaces by the American Planning Association in 2013.
So nothing makes Mitchell madder than damning reviews on Internet sites like Trip Advisor:
“The bad news is you will have to fight the homeless off to sit on (benches). I have seen more than 40 at a time. I would stay away from this park at all costs.”
Learn more about feeding homeless people.
Gymnastics winding down, but quartet’s friendship still strong
The four little girls were 6 years old when they met at Naydenov Gymnastics in Vancouver.
They trained together for most of their years in club gymnastics and together attended both CAM High School in Battle Ground and Running Start classes at Clark College in Vancouver.
Vancouver’s KayCee Gassaway and Kalliah McCartney, Dallas Smith of Heisson and Kayla Wonderly of La Center are now college seniors.
McCartney and Wonderly were training at Multnomah Athletic Club by the end of their club gymnastics days. When they and Smith reunited as college freshmen at Sacramento State University, Gassaway had already been at Brigham Young University for a year after completing high school early.
So while they have not all been teammates ever since the day they met, as Smith said, “We’ve been best friends for 16 years.”
Gassaway took a redshirt season after ankle surgery in 2013, bringing the quartet’s standing back in line as college juniors a year ago. While the story would tie together particularly neatly if they were completing their gymnastics careers at the same time, it will not happen that way because McCartney is taking a medical redshirt season after foot surgery and will have a second chance at her senior season next year.
Learn more about the gymnasts.
