Rain returned to Clark County the past few days, but what kind of weather will the workweek hold? Check our local weather coverage.
In case you missed them, here are some of the top stories of the weekend:
Vancouver’s lone ice rink is here to stay, after all.
After announcing an impending closure in early April, Mountain View Ice Arena owners announced Friday that it will remain open. City Bible Church elders approved the building’s sale Thursday evening, officially shuttering the church’s plan to build a school in its place.
Rink owner and church member Bruce Wood said he and rink manager Bob Knoerl delivered a letter of intent to purchase the rink to the church Tuesday. The sale was approved at approximately $4.1 million and included the reimbursement of costs incurred by City Christian Schools to convert the rink to a school.
“We’ve begun a journey to purchase the Mountain View Ice Arena and make it our permanent home,” Knoerl said in a letter addressed to rink users.
That marks a change of direction from an April 4 post on Mountain View Ice Arena’s Facebook page notifying patrons the rink would close Aug. 31.
Read the full story: Vancouver’s only ice rink to remain open after approved sale
This allergy season, some people are thinking that their noses are runnier, their eyes are weepier and their sneezes are, well, sneezier. They’re right, said Dr. Rebecca Hoffman.
“It seems to get worse every year because — guess what — it does,” said Hoffman. “Every year, we are having more and more pollen in the air.”
She is a family medicine provider at Kaiser Permanente’s Salmon Creek Medical Office, where the topic has become a frequently-asked question.
“‘I don’t have allergies. Why am I allergic now?’ I hear this several times a day,” Hoffman said.
“Each year is incrementally worse,” Hoffman said. “It has a lot to do with weather patterns.
Read the full story: Pollen: It’s getting worse
Something new seems to appear with every glance at The Waterfront Vancouver, but even as construction increases this summer, developers say there is a long way to go.
“There’s so much that has to happen in the next couple months,” developer Barry Cain told The Columbian in a phone interview last week. “It’s just a lot going on. It’s a big deal trying to get it open.”
Nearly two years after breaking ground, the $1.5 billion project’s first five buildings are upright. A sixth, to house the Hotel Indigo, is expected to break ground this summer. What was once the site of the Boise Cascade paper mill is now beginning to resemble the plaza of restaurants, offices and apartments promised in artists’ renderings.
Yet even with hype mounting, there are no firm opening dates. Ideas of a grand opening for June, July or August have come and gone. Now Cain said it makes more sense to open piece by piece.
Read the full story: Vancouver, developer, businesses in no rush with waterfront
“See the clearcuts and forest at various stages of forestry? That’s essentially what we preserved,” said Cherie Kearney, Columbia Land Trust forest conservation director. She gestured toward the mountains with one hand while holding an iPad displaying a map in the other. “That, to me, looks good.”
She was pointing to 24,000 acres of timberland — most of it owned by Poulsbo-based Pope Resources. For more than a decade she’s been negotiating the future of that land with Jon Rose, vice president of Pope’s real estate division, and others from their organizations.
Back then, a housing boom in this isolated part of Skamania County threatened to replace the forest with clusters of subdivisions and hundreds of homes. The prospect of massive residential development between the volcano and Swift Reservoir ignited an intense and often acrimonious debate across the political spectrum. But Rose and Kearney drove negotiations that brought together unlikely allies and smoothed over some historic rifts.
The final piece is due to come together on June 15, when they plan to close on a $4 million sale of conservation easements on about 7,800 of those acres. Pope will continue operating it as timberland while guaranteeing the land will never be developed. The Washington Department of Natural Resources will own the easements. The federal government provided the grant.
Read the full story: Monumental agreement — One-time adversaries protect habitat, logging near Mount St Helens
