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Here are the top stories on columbian.com this week:
A major fire in wood chip piles at a Longview paper mill Tuesday evening left surprised Clark County residents waking up to smoky, unhealthy air Wednesday morning.
Fine particulate pollution from the fire could linger through Friday.
At the end of a two-hour public hearing, with roughly 20 public comments and dozens in attendance, the Clark County Council approved the 179th Street Access Management and Circulation Plan on Tuesday night.
The vote was 3-1. Councilor Sue Marshall opposed the plan, and Councilor Michelle Belkot was not in attendance.
CATHLAMET — Zhong Deng expected that surprises would pop up during his 75-day bike ride from Astoria, Ore., to Yorktown, Va., but he didn’t expect many before reaching the starting line.
Biking down from Seattle, Deng was planning to cross the Lewis and Clark Bridge into Oregon, but he had to pivot after learning that the bridge was closed to most traffic for repairs. (After an eight-hour closure from Sunday night to Monday morning, the bridge has reopened to pedestrians and emergency vehicles.)
Plans are underway to create a new, single-story office building at east Vancouver’s Columbia Tech Center, according to pre-planning documents submitted to the city of Vancouver.
The property to be developed lies just west of local drug generation company absci’s Vancouver headquarters and along the western edge of the Columbia Tech Center Park.
If you drive through Hockinson, you can’t miss the cheerful white-and-red building with the aqua trim on the corner of Northeast 182nd Avenue and Northeast 159th Street. A mural of a cow advertises hard-scoop ice cream for sale inside the landmark Hockinson Market, a powerful enticement for those traveling to and from the area’s U-pick blueberry fields or Battle Ground Lake.
The cow is a nod to the building’s 1928 origins. It was constructed by the Hockinson Dairy Co-Op Association with a massive electric cooler in the basement where dairy farmers could store their products. Before that, the spot held a small country store built in the late 1800s by Ambrosius Hakanson; when he applied for a postal license, the U.S. Postal Service changed the town’s name from Eureka to Hockinson, an Americanization of Ambrosius’ Finnish surname. Now owner Jim VanNatta has put his stamp on local history with the Hockinson Market, a hopping community hub with house-made pizza and craft beer.
