4th Annual - 4th of July Party, 3PM until the fireworks are done, Live Music, Free Hotdogs, Hamburgers, and fun for the family!

Regatta 2008August 4-11th : Pier 39 Sponsors the annual Astoria Regatta, Don't miss the Fun!

4th Annual Bumble Bee/CRPA Reunion. August 9th 3-6pm. Immediately following the Regatta Grand Parade, Come celebrate the working waterfront and Astoria's Cannery Workers. Proceeds benefit the Hanthorn Cannery Foundation and the Cannery Woman's Statue Fund.

Check Out the Pier 39's favorite Spots: Coffee Girl and Rogue Ales Public House.

Rogue will be unleashing Imperial Red, February 7, 6PM at the Astoria Rogue in Pier 39 - Astoria. Come meet Clara, Rogue's New Manager. According to Clara: "6 PM we will 'unveil' the tap and start pouring. Everyone gets one free Imperial Red, and we will have free appetizers. There will most likely be a cheeseball speech made. Should be fun."
For More Info:
Clara Blenkush
Rogue Ales Astoria
(503)325-5964

ROGUE Goes TOPLESS, Actually, Rogue lost its roof in the "Hurricane Winds of 2007"

Pier 39 had extensive damage, but recovered quick with repairs. Rogue roof back on and new manager and new menu to add great flavor to Great Beer!

Hanthorn Cannery Foundation Gets End Of Year Gift of Original Carruther's Pak Shaper

August 11, Astoria Regatta and CRPA/BUMBLE BEE 3rd Annual Reunion! See www.canneryworker.org for details

Astoria Yacht Clubs Prepares 2007 Thursday Night Dingy Races! Bring your 505 or Lazer, Come join the Fun off of Rogue's Deck and Pier 39's Dock! or Contact Astoria Yacht Club for more details: www.astoriayachtclub.com

Opening of Coffee Girls Dessert Night... Taste a special selection of wines and treats that will make your weekend after dinner extra warm and cozy... A special place on Friday nights ....Now Open until 11pm.

Pier 39 offices make room for Autio Law practice expansion and moves main offices to business center area.

ShoreBank Cascadia moves in to Building 5! John Berdes President and CEO is head of the new Oregon Office.

NOW HIRING: Pier 39 is looking for a maintenance person and Summer Maintenance Personnel. Going to School, need Summer Employment, Send us an E-mail! summerjob@pier39-astoria.com

Pier 39 "Skunk Works" Prepares Secret Entry Into Local Keel Boat Competition.. Acquires "Wild Hair"...Repair to the Olson 30 Starts

Street Musicians welcome this summer... play the sax, trumpet, or other street music? come play at the Pier....See Office For Permit

Every Thursday Night, Astoria Yacht Club Dingy Races!!!!!!! See The Excitement At Pier 39

2nd Annual CRPA/Bumble Bee Cannery Workers Reunion, August 12, 4-7PM @ Pier 39

After months of negotiation and the hard work of all involved, special thanks to the Mayor Wills Van Dusen for convincing his board to extend the Trolley operations 3 blocks from 36th to 39th Streets. Coffee Girl, Zettty McKay diligently provided essential information about the thousands of visitors adventuring to Pier 39. With the addition of Rogue and several new businesses, Pier 39 surely will benefit and add a new venue for Astoria's Riverfront Trolley.

New projects enliven Astoria's east end

As published in Sunset Magazine

Next great destination: Astoria

Even when it rains these days, Astoria, Oregon, looks bright. New shops, restaurants, and hotels are springing up downtown and along the nearby Columbia riverfront—from the West Mooring Basin, where the over-the-water Cannery Pier Hotel opened last summer, to Pier 39, where the abandoned Bumble Bee Seafoods cannery buildings are being converted into offices, lodging, a pub, a coffeehouse, and the sales office for the new condos going up down the road.

“All along the waterfront there’s an energy,” says native son and Pier 39 developer Floyd Holcom. “I don’t think anybody would have predicted it.”

Astoria has always been a place for self-starters, from Lewis and Clark to John Jacob Astor himself. The decline of logging and fishing over the last half-century sent this historic Oregon community—the oldest American city west of the Mississippi—into a long economic slump, but there’s no denying the upswing. No longer can you pick up a century-old Victorian for next to nothing, and new art galleries are snapping up empty storefronts on downtown’s Commercial Street, where the 1925 Liberty Theater—$6 million into its projected $8.5 million revival—often sells out its 677-seat house.

But for the foreseeable future, Astoria is keeping it real. The Astoria Riverfront Trolley (tickets $1; 503/325-6311), popular with tourists who pile off the cruise ships that call on Astoria in spring and fall, clatters by the town’s active fishing fleet. The colorfully idiosyncratic works in Lunar Boy Gallery (opened by two former Disney Imagineers) seem as comfortable on Commercial Street as the neighboring chocolate store and apothecary. And no one can stop the rain, which at an average of 67 inches a year scares off some would-be newcomers—and, in so doing, may prove to be the town’s saving grace.

In Astoria, new life is springing up all along the Columbia River. Opposite page, clockwise from top left: Jimmy Pickering (seated) and Troy Winterrowd, owners of Lunar Boy Gallery; the Cannery Pier Hotel; the hotel’s lobby provides warmth on the rain-iest of days; chef Uriah Hulsey of the Columbian Café; the revamped Liberty; sea lions sunning on the pier.

LODGING
• Cannery Pier Hotel. From your bed (or bath), watch oceangoing ships glide by seemingly inches away. Built on pilings over the river, the new 46-room hotel’s multilevel design mimics the original 1897 cannery that once stood here. From $139. 10 Basin St.; 888/325-4996.

• Fishermen’s Suites, Pier 39. Three new suites occupy an upstairs corner at Pier 39, each with a commanding view of the river and forested hills beyond. From $150. 100 39th St.; 503/325-2502.

DINING
• Columbian Café. Long a local favorite, this funky hole-in-the-wall is a true destination eatery, thanks to chef-owner Uriah Hulsey’s inspired vegetarian fare. $$; breakfast and lunch Mon–Sat, dinner Wed–Sat. 1114 Marine Dr.; 503/325-2233.

• T. Paul’s Urban Café. Eclectic and original, not to mention filling. Try the turkey sandwich (on focaccia with marionberry mayo) or the chipotle pesto pasta with bay shrimp and spinach. $$; lunch and dinner Mon–Sat. 1119 Commercial St.; 503/338-5133.

CULTURE
• Liberty Theater. The hand-painted murals have been refreshed, the chandelier restored, and the elegance returned to this former movie palace that now hosts a variety of local and visiting performers. 1203 Commercial St.; 503/325-5922.

• Lunar Boy Gallery. Original work by leading pop surrealist artists, with quirky modern gifts to match. Closed Tue. 1133 Commercial St.; 503/325-1566.

2006

Town lures visitors with Victorian architecture, maritime history

By Terry Tazioli

The Seattle Times

ASTORIA, Oregon - If you miss its history, you miss Astoria.

If you miss its eccentricities - and its eccentrics - you miss Astoria.

If you walk its riverfront and streets and climb its hills, hood up, bent over against a sideways rain, sopping wet, longing for some seafood and a beer and a place to drain the water out of your shoes - then finding it all and happily laughing at your perseverance, you will miss Astoria when you leave.

This city of 10,000, near the very northwest tip of Oregon and just a few miles inside the notorious mouth of the Columbia River (called the "Graveyard of the Pacific" for the huge number of shipwrecks and deaths it's spawned), can snare a visitor just as easily as its fishermen gaffed salmon as big as your leg - bigger - decades ago. But it needs to be given the opportunity. And you need to listen.

For beneath its obvious tourist offerings Astoria is bursting with desire to speak of its nearly 200-year-old history.

Steve Forrester, editor and publisher of The Daily Astorian newspaper, calls the city "one big attic." Indeed, with several museums, ranging from the spectacular Columbia River Maritime Museum on the river to the jam-packed Clatsop County Heritage Museum up the hill, there is plenty of opportunity for Astoria history immersion therapy. And just wait, he says, "until there's an estate sale. The stuff that comes out of some of those homes you wouldn't believe."

Astoria has been "rediscovered" of late, by scribes spinning tales of its trappings for readers of everything from The New York Times to Sunset magazine.

They write of its restaurants, its new and newly refurbished accommodations. Especially the accommodations. Hotels like the 5-month-old Cannery Pier Hotel, built to resemble the fish cannery it replaced on a pier over the Columbia. And the refurbished, 80-year-old Hotel Elliott, right downtown, with a 360-degree view of the area from its roof garden. Hotels that have lured visitors, now, from all over the world.

They write about Astoria's Victorian homes, arguably the biggest collection in Oregon. The shops that line Commercial Street and nearly all of the downtown side streets, where you'll be hard-pressed to find a vacant storefront. They sing of its three-mile waterfront trolley, which for an extra buck will stop and pick you up at just about any unmarked stop and can be so jammed at times that it takes about 40 minutes to get across town, some say (it's usually a 45-minute round trip, give or take); the view from atop the 700-plus-feet-above sea level Astoria Column, painted with scenes of local history and commanding a view on a clear day that will leave no jaw undropped.

And they are right. All of them. For these trappings, and more, are part of what has brought a resurgent flow of visitors to this river town. But they aren't the only ones on the comeback trail.

There's been a steady flow in the past few years of native Astorians "coming home."

They've had an impact. "What holds small towns back is the lack of ability to network upward and outward," says Forrester. "The effect of these people is that they've been out in the wider world and they have contacts and they bring that expertise back with them."

Robert "Jake" Jacob, born and raised on the river, is one. The architect built his Cannery Pier Hotel literally over the Columbia, under the south rise of the Astoria-Megler Bridge, on the pilings of the old Union Fishermen's Cooperative Packing Company, itself a lesson in salmon and labor history (displayed in galleries lining a hallway in the hotel and in a book written by Jacob's brother Greg called "Fins, Finns and Astorians" to mark the hotel's opening).

The hotel purposefully resembles a part of the original structure for which it's named, so much so that one guest could be forgiven for insisting that the hotel was a remodel of the cannery.

Jacob laughs. "It's not," but later he pointed out that he'd had plenty of guidance from former cannery employees who watched the building go up and insisted that he not muck it up, right down to the color of the exterior paint.

Across town and upriver, Floyd Holcom is another home-again native. A few years ago, he bought a different pier, also with old cannery buildings (a cannery that at one time made Bumble Bee tuna famous). In the years since, he's redone the top floor of one of the cannery buildings, which now houses, among other things, techies, attorneys and three guest suites. A nearly completed pub and a developing small boat museum are taking up more space in what is now called Pier 39.

The newest arrival is Zetty McKay, who opened her coffee shop, Coffee Girl, on the pier just last week. She's another Astoria native, graduate of the University of Oregon, a former TV anchor who came home to be near her family and the coast. Now she makes soup and tests baked goods on her customers in the morning while she ramps up the business and has a show afternoons on a local radio station.

On shore, there's a planned trolley stop and initial construction activity for a $15-million condominium project.

Like Jacob, Holcom's description of his project and his future plans are shot through with Astoria history as the world's one-time, premier fish-packing hub. Holcom stands, with no small amount of awe, at a white-washed wall inside the old cannery. There are scrawled the names, dates and jobs of many of the crowd of people who showed up for a Bumble Bee employees reunion that Holcom sponsored last summer.

"Look at these names," he says, and he begins to read aloud and lecture on who did what. He's still hoping that more of Astoria's long-time Bumble Bees will sign the wall. He plans a protective covering so the names will remain - for a long time.

Downtown is the Columbia River Maritime Museum, a spectacular, nearly over-the-top collection of the area's seafaring history, from Astoria's cannery days to its watch over the ships and fishing craft that pass it daily on the Columbia. In fact, the channel connecting the Pacific to ports in Vancouver, Wash., and Portland passes close enough to make the museum's giant windows onto giant cargo ships one of the best exhibits imaginable.

However, as the day passed on Tuesday of last week, there were more than a few museum visitors who had braved winter storms to huddle around a display on bar pilots - the skilled mariners who board ships needing their assistance to cross the bar farther down river that separates the river from the ocean. The channel is narrow there, the seas treacherous, often deadly. The clash of severe weather, river current and tide can build swells 20 feet high - sometimes higher.

The exhibit had taken on a somber reality that day. A raging storm had been blamed for the death of a Washington state pilot the night before who fell when trying to reboard his pilot boat after successfully steering a cargo ship into the ocean - the first such fatality in more than 30 years.

A new and sad piece of Astoria history.

And that, locals says, is what you need to know about them, when you visit - the history of those who've spent their entire lives in Astoria, who were born here and never left. Whose families were born here and never left. Who built the infrastructure that gave rise to a town loaded with architectural gems, museums, shops of every ilk, personalities of every description - and the chance to remake the city.

Forrester says he once asked a former bookstore owner why Astoria and its surrounds were such an eccentric place and attracted such an eccentric breed.

"She said there's this theory in biology - or the life sciences - that the richest life forms are found at the very edge of ecosystems. And here we are, at the edge."

At first there were the natives - among them the Clatsop and Chinook Indians - who fished the Columbia and who would make salmon famous. Then came John Jacob Astor's "Astorians," who formed the first white settlement, hellbent on forming a trading empire. Then the immigrants from Finns to Italians, and the labors of imported Chinese. And corporations, and prostitutes, and bars and wild days and nights of rowdiness. Unions and cooperatives and fighting and killings.

Then Astoria fell - thanks in great part to the depletion of the Columbia's unbelievable salmon runs.

Nowadays, Mary Adams sits alone in the warmth of a tiny, gray visitor center at the top of Coxcomb Hill where the Astoria Column is bathed in fog and driving rain. She's another native. She knows why Astoria never completely fell off the map. And why it's re-emerging.

"There was a survey and the tourists were asked to rank Astoria on a scale of one to 10. Someone gave it a 12!" she said - because it's not like other Oregon resort locations (or any other, for that matter). "Because there's a city here. It's real."

How long will it last?

Many say as long as the cost of owning something here or even living here doesn't skyrocket the way it has on the rest of the coast.

But Robert Jacob's mother, Dorothy, had a better barometer, he said.

"She used to say `when noodles become pasta, when junk becomes antiques and when coffee becomes latte, get out.' "

To be sure, there's some pasta in Astoria - and antiques and even latte drive-throughs.

But there are too many of Forrester's eccentrics, too many of Jacob's old-timers and far too much of the smell of fish in the air ("I swear there are days ... that I can still smell the tuna. I know I can," Holcom insists) to shut down the cannery town for good.

2005

October 2005

Urban Pacific Finds Opportunity in Picturesque Oregon City

By Keat Foong, Executive Editor, Multi-Housing News

OCTOBER 01, 2005 -- Astoria, Ore. -- Launching an aggressive expansion program outside its Southern California base, Urban Pacific Builders LLC has broken ground on a $21 million waterfront loft condominium.

To be called The Cannery Lofts, it is located at a former cannery site on the banks of the Columbia River west of Portland, Ore.

"Astoria, Ore., reminds me of what San Francisco would have looked like 100 years ago," said Scott Choppin, Urban Pacific managing partner, referring to the city's waterfront orientation, hills, Victorian homes and architecturally significant downtown.

The 93-unit phase one of The Cannery Lofts will be developed adjacent to the Pier 39 complex and a marina, on a vacant four-acre parcel along the riverfront in the East Mooring Basin area.

A local trolley line will serve the community. The project will feature commercial space on the ground floor, including a restaurant, as well as public transit.

Urban Pacific purchased the vacant 10-acre waterfront site, previously intended for marine and/or industrial use, from a developer that had intended to put up conventional condos there, said Choppin. But Urban Pacific, which was created in 1999 to develop innovative urban infill multi-housing, intends to create loft-style condos with an urbane cutting edge, using the knowledge it has gained elsewhere.

The first phase will consist of three four-story buildings of 30, 30 and 33 units, respectively. Ceilings are 11 feet high on the first three floors and 18 feet high (with mezzanine lofts) on the top floors. Prices range from $249,000 to $350,000 for units measuring 1,030 to 1,377 square feet.

According to Choppin, The Cannery Lofts will draw on buyers from Portland, Astoria and as far away as Seattle. Many buyers will be seeking a second home, but Choppin said his company has been surprised by the amount of interest from baby boomers thinking of downsizing and fleeing from pricier metro areas in their retirement.

Urban Pacific claims the project, the first of its kind in Oregon's North Coast area, has no competition currently. Equity is provided by high net-worth investors. Seventy-five percent LTV financing is supplied by the local Bank of Astoria.

Thomas Johnson Architects LLC of Portland designed the project. Portland-based Yorke and Curtis is the general contractor. Choppin said the trend toward more people living in the urban core closer to their work will likely also occur in Astoria.

September 2005

LCI 713 Reunion, September 11

Vintage buildings, modern lofts herald new age of Astoria

The city that once teemed with canneries embarks on a new course but preserves the character of its past

Thursday, August 11, 2005

KATY MULDOON

The Oregonian

ASTORIA -- Floyd Holcom pulls at a stubborn, weatherworn door. He slides the panel open along a rusty track and steps into a dark room that smells of salt and timber and time.

Soon, this corner of Pier 39, built in 1875 and Astoria's lone remaining historic fish cannery, will transform into the most modern of storefronts: a sales office for an upscale, 93-unit condominium project -- the Cannery Lofts -- due to break ground this month.

Pier 39, the condos and other developments rising along a downtown waterfront once squirming with 18 canneries are evidence that this city of 10,000 on Oregon's northwestern tip is crafting a future powerfully linked to its piscatorial past.

"Anybody can develop," says Holcom, a 41-year-old Astoria native -- a dark-haired fellow both round and sturdy, not unlike the pilings that support the cannery he's renovating. "But Astoria is the oldest American city west of the Rockies. We have more history than any Oregon town. . . . We need development based on our history."

Pier 39, the hodgepodge of 10 connected cannery buildings Holcom bought in 2002, complete with the original, clear vertical-grain, old-growth timbers and beefy wide-plank flooring, provides the eastern bookend to the changes coming Astoria's way.

On the pier's southwest corner, Newport-based Rogue Ales is building a brewpub one floor below spaces Holcom has renovated into riverfront offices and swanky vacation suites. In another spacious, dimly lit, first-floor room, he envisions a seafood restaurant.

On the southeast side, where compressors once filled walk-in freezers with enough coolant to keep thousands of tuna on ice, he'll install museum displays that herald Astoria's past as the world's cannery capital.

And on the dry side of the dock leading to Pier 39, Holcom plans a park honoring the unsung work force -- the women who held most of the cannery jobs and kept the places humming for the better part of a century. He and others will dedicate the park Saturday, when generations of cannery and cold-storage workers gather for a reunion at Pier 39.

Closer to Astoria's city center, hammers and nail guns signal the rise of Mill Pond Village, an 86-lot subdivision designed to resemble a vintage fishing burg.

And at the town's western edge, the luxurious, 46-room Cannery Pier Hotel, due to open this month on another old cannery site -- and built to look like one -- still smells of drying paint and carpet glue.

Which, by all accounts, is easier on the nose than the days when salmon and Dungeness crab piled high in the warehouses and when Astoria was nicknamed Tuna Town for good reason.

When the famous Columbia River salmon ran thick in the 1940s, Mae Wheeler recalls, days in the canneries started at 7 a.m. and might not end until midnight.

Like others on the fish packing line, Wheeler stood for all those hours, sharp cleaver in hand, atop a wood grate over a perennially wet concrete floor.

The salmon steaks arriving on a conveyor belt were bigger than a roast beef, a testament to the 60- or 70-pound salmon that seem like exaggerated fish stories by today's standards.

One after another, Wheeler and the women who worked elbow-to-elbow with her, would grab chunks of brilliant pink salmon by the narrow belly and whack off the steak portion. Those moist, round steaks went in the cans first, the belly slices wrapped around the sides, and off it would go, rattling down the line.

Eventually, cans with colorful labels touting "Fancy Chinook Salmon" and "Gill Netters Best" landed in such faraway places as New York and London.

Wheeler still lives in Astoria. When she talks about those days, working to feed her family and put her daughter through college, her slender, manicured hands chop the air as if they were cleavers themselves. Wheeler's cheeks, at 98 years old, remain pink and nearly unlined. And her stories spill out sprinkled with such clear detail that you can almost see downtown's sidewalks bustling with cannery ladies, as they were called, dressed in their white-belted jumpsuits and white rubber boots, their hair wrapped up in white bandanas.

Wheeler had five monogrammed uniforms, so she could wear a freshly laundered one each day. When she got home from shifts that paid "a dollar something" an hour, she recalls, she'd undress in the garage -- particular during tuna packing season, when the fish stink on her clothes was unfit for the indoors. Washing in lemon or vinegar excised the smell from her skin.

She didn't mind the work.

"The fish," she says, "is what kept Astoria going."

Astoria, founded in 1811, always has been the kind of town where hard work is as expected as rain. If it wasn't canning, it was seining or gill netting, logging or chopping firewood.

Native people had harvested salmon near the Columbia's mouth for thousands of years by the time canneries arrived in 1866.

By 1882, so many salmon swam into fishermen's nets that canneries couldn't handle the load and hundreds of dead fish were dumped back into the river each day. The next year, according to the Oregon Historical Society, markets were saturated when the combined production from 39 Columbia River canneries exceeded 42 million pounds.

Chinese immigrants made up most of Astoria's original cannery work force in the days when the town was as bawdy as it was muddy, with 35 brothels and 54 saloons. But mechanical butchering machines, which arrived in the early 1900s, replaced much of that labor. During wars that followed, as men enlisted in the service, women took over cannery work.

At Pier 39, site of the old Hanthorn Cannery, where the Columbia River Packers Association made the Bumble Bee brand a household staple, the turnover in the labor force is evident in the old restrooms: The men's room has four stalls, and the women's room 12.

A feminine work force, though, didn't remotely equate to a soft workplace. Competition was fierce among the canneries, and sentiment heated between canneries and fishermen. Unions wielded power that not everyone appreciated.

When Mae Wheeler joined a union, she remembers, someone used a fish skinning knife to scratch lines down both sides of her sky blue Studebaker.

Fish stocks rose and fell, but it was all downhill after Bonneville Dam was built in 1937. At the old Elmore Cannery, where 418,000 cases of salmon were canned in 1941, just 150,000 cases a year went out the door by the early 1950s.

By the mid-'50s, Clatsop County Historical Society records show, tuna was more important to Astoria's canneries than salmon. But eventually, corporate mergers and globalization spelled an end to the city's long-sustaining industry.

Enter Oregon's hot housing market, a churning economy and tourism, and it's easy to see why Astoria, which averages nearly 70 inches of rain a year, appears to be heating up.

Dry-side Oregonians and out-of-staters are snapping up view homes for prices that, compared with Portland or Bend or -- certainly -- California, feel like a steal.

Cameras clicked one day last September when three hulking cruise ships bigger than any building in town pulled into Astoria's port. This year, 14 ships are expected to bring cruising vacationers to the downtown core.

There, they'll find shops that wouldn't feel out of place in Portland's trendy Pearl District. They can sip suds at a microbrewery, dine at a handful of upscale restaurants and browse creative art spaces such as Lunar Boy Gallery and Studio Access & Gallery.

They'll see test strips of pastel paint that recently went up on the Liberty Theater's exterior -- window dressing on a multimillion-dollar restoration of the 1925 vaudeville house, where such luminaries as Duke Ellington and Bing Crosby once played. Nearby, the Elliot Hotel, vintage 1924, got a $4 million makeover. And down the road, as workers scurry to complete the new Cannery Pier Hotel, its developers are planning even more rooms, shops, a restaurant and marina where, once, canned fish was king.

Katy Muldoon: 503-221-8526; katymuldoon@news.oregonian.com

ASTORIA, Ore. -- Up until two years ago, I thought Astoria was just a small town on the Columbia River that you had to negotiate after crossing from Washington to reach the really fun places farther south on the Oregon coast, like Seaside or Cannon Beach.

However during a short stay in 2002, I sensed a certain spark and charm -- not too commercial, not too touristy -- that made me feel comfortable.

The oldest city west of the Rockies was stirring with fresh ambitions, with its state-of-the-art Maritime Museum, new hotels on the drawing boards, an emerging Riverwalk trail and trolley through town along the river, and seasonal Lewis and Clark Amtrak tours between Astoria and Portland -- a huge success this past summer.

After hearing about legislation passed by Congress on Nov. 1 -- designating 560 acres in Oregon and Washington as Lewis and Clark National Historic Park -- I decided to revisit Astoria, which is, after all, in the heart of Lewis and Clark country. The city, of course, has been part of the political process over the past five years to improve its stake in the Lewis and Clark legacy, especially with the bicentennial right around the corner.

Part of the acreage involved in the park deal, is Fort Clatsop National Memorial -- a commemoration to the 1805-06 winter encampment of the 33-member Corps of Discovery -- which is just up the road a piece from Astoria. The other three sites -- the Megler Safety Rest Area, Station Camp and Cape Disappointment (formerly Fort Canby) State Park -- are in Washington.

The bicentennial is only a year away, so by next summer plans for all the celebrations should be fully evolved and integrated with the newly designated, two-state park. Ilwaco and Long Beach in Washington and Astoria all expect a serious spike in tourism next year, partly because of the park consolidation but also because of the long-term, abiding interest in the Corps of Discovery's travels in the Columbia River and Pacific coastal region in 1805-1806.

Astoria is blessed with a historical heritage that's hard to match in northwest Oregon. Victorian homes dot the hillside above town and the famous, one city-block Flavel House Museum is a central attraction in the downtown area. The house, built in 1885 by Columbia River bar pilot George Flavel, has been fully restored to its original Victorian specifications.

The 125-foot-high Astoria Column, built in 1925 on Coxcomb Hill above downtown and decorated with portrayals of Native American accomplishments, as well as explorations by white men such as the famous sea captain Robert Gray and, of course, Lewis and Clark, also has been restored to its original luster.

Since July the column has been lighted at night. Visitors can climb the circular stairs 110 feet to a viewing platform and take in the 360-degree panorama that includes the four-mile-long Astoria-Megler bridge across the Columbia and the Warrenton Bridge that snakes west toward the coast.

What I found most alive and well in Astoria is an entrepreneurial energy in historical places that is adding to Astoria's allure as a travel destination rather than just a stopover on the way to the Oregon coast.

Take Astoria entrepreneur Floyd Holcom. A National Guard Special Forces sergeant and Iraq war veteran, Floyd isn't afraid to tackle big projects. His latest is the renovation of Pier 39 at the foot of 39th Street, the longest private pier on the Columbia in Astoria and a landmark in its own right.

It's a daunting challenge. After years of commercial use, the historic 128,000-square-foot pier, former home of the old Hanthorn Fish Cannery and later a Bumble Bee cold storage and packing plant, needed some repair and shoring up. But gradually Floyd's vision of the pier as a major Astoria destination is taking shape.

Access to the pier from the mainland is by a sturdy wooden bridge originally built strong enough for heavy commercial trucks. Besides view office space, Floyd has designed three separate hotel-style rooms he calls Fisherman's Suites, the anchor being the Captain's Suite. For $575 a night, guests get mahogany floors and countertops, gourmet kitchen, 180-degree view of the Columbia River, giant walk-in shower and mammoth Jacuzzi (the "party bathroom," Holcum calls it), spacious separate dining and living rooms, high-speed Internet, and barking sea lions on a nearby riprap breakwater for entertainment.

The First Mate Suite, again spacious with an amazing view, runs $175 a night, while the smaller but still elegant Boat Puller's suite goes for $125 a night. A private entrance and parking are provided.

Floyd also is on the prowl for an anchor restaurant tenant to fill some of the 15,000 square feet of the pier's former wooden cold storage locker space. The city already has approved his design for the introduction of windows into the space.

And a small group of investors with $4 million to burn has transformed the historic 1924 Hotel Elliott on 12th Street (west of Pier 39 in the middle of downtown) into a destination boutique hotel. Originally with 68 rooms and no private bathrooms, the hotel has been pared to the original five floors with a total of 32 rooms (all with private baths), still with the character of a Roaring '20s hotel kept alive, especially in the look of the original hallways.

The fifth floor is all luxury suites, including the extraordinary Presidential Suite, which features a full kitchen, custom fireplace, dining and living areas, Jacuzzi and walk-in shower, circular staircase and a baby grand piano.

My third-floor room was small but comfortable with high-speed Internet service, coffee, heated bathroom, walk-in shower (no tub), and the hotel's signature "wonderful bed." The window coverings operate more like a stubborn shower curtain than a simple way to block light.

For me, hotel rooms in general are always too warm, so even when they are available, such as at the Hotel Elliott, I never get to take advantage of 440-count Egyptian cotton sheets or custom duvet covers so popular these days. The mattress was firm enough, my main comfort consideration for any bed.

The hotel recently opened an underground wine bar (a little pricey), cigar lounge and small conference space. It also has partnered with The Schooner restaurant across the street, which offers an excellent breakfast, lunch and dinner menu, as well as a good variety of local brews.

The enterprising hotel owners commissioned a large mural on a long, narrow rooftop wall of the Liberty Theater, which I could see from my third-floor room, depicting a typical Columbia River scene. So even on dark, cloudy, rainy days, guests can still see the river from their rooms, if only in mural form. I'm not sure how effective it is, but a smaller, similar mural also graces a wall on the hotel's rooftop garden deck.

The hotel is walking distance from the now completed Riverwalk and popular restaurants downtown, including the Cannery Cafe, Rio Cafe, Silver Salmon Grille, the Wet Dog Cafe and Andrew & Steve's Cafe, the latter a popular, traditional, family style dining spot near the waterfront.

The Liberty Theater, considered one of Oregon's best examples of a 1920s vaudeville/motion picture palace, is undergoing a million-dollar renovation scheduled to be completed as a performing arts center by next year. The plan is to restore most of the theater's original charm and opulence while upgrading it to modern performing arts center standards and technology.

Twelve oil paintings of Venice scenes, painted by a local artist when the theater was built in 1922 after a bad fire leveled parts of downtown Astoria, have been delicately restored, as have many of the original ornamental figures and lighting.

Astoria has it all -- good food, parks, museums, a stunning waterfront, trolley and, from my impression, ambitious folks who are determined to make it even better. Lewis and Clark braved Pacific Ocean storms to camp nearby during the winter. Wasn't a bad idea then -- and an even better idea now.

· Astoria Chamber of Commerce and Information -- 111 W. Marine Drive; 800-535-3637; www.oldoregon.com

The eastern edge of Astoria is experiencing a growing renaissance with the construction of an industrial business park, the redevelopment of a 130-year-old cannery and talk of more projects on the horizon.

We're excited about the mix of things going on in the east end, said Astoria City Manager Dan Bartlett. We want the east entrance to the city to be vital and active. We don't want it to be run down with cannery equipment and broken-down cars. (The developers) have been taking an area that was somewhat derelict and turning it into an active part of the community.

Currently under construction on 39th Street just off U.S. Highway 30 is the Astoria Business Park. The first phase of the project includes three, 16,000-square-foot buildings on about 4 acres.

Owner and developer Randy Stemper said the spaces are designed to be flexible, varying in size from 800 square feet to 16,000 square feet and able to accommodate a wide range of uses.

We will take general industrial or light manufacturing, he said. You could have office as well as retail. If you were manufacturing something and wanted to have a retail outlet, you could.

Stemper said that kind of modern industrial space doesn't exist in Astoria - or in all of Northern Clatsop County for that matter.

I believe that the need was there, and if I built it, people would show up, he said. So far, so good.

Stemper hasn't begun to market the space, but already the word is getting out and businesses are coming to him. He said he's surprised that about half of the inquiries have come from out-of-town and even out-of-state firms.

Some of the interest has come from warehousing companies and a couple of start-up manufacturers. One is an equipment manufacturer, one is a distributor of industrial fasteners, he said.

Bartlett said the city hopes Stemper's project will serve as a sort of industrial business incubator.

We've tried to do what we can to influence this so it's successful. We've worked with Mr. Stemper on that parcel to get a broad range of light industrial and business incubator uses, Bartlett said. We welcome it as a development in the community.

The first two buildings at the Astoria Business Park are scheduled to be completed later this month, with the third building in phase one coming online by mid-November. The design for phase two of the project, which will be built on the remaining five acres of the property, is still being determined, Stemper said.

Farther down 39th Street on the Columbia River sits Pier 39, a redevelopment of a former BumbleBee Tuna cannery and food-storage facility. The property, which includes 10 buildings and 128,000 square feet of space, was acquired by Floyd Holcom about three years ago.

Holcom has redeveloped part of the property to include three fisherman's suites - nightly hotel-like rentals that are accessible from the water.

Pier 39 also has 18,000 square feet of office space, which is currently 100 percent occupied. One of the office tenants, a canvass manufacturer, makes and sells its products onsite.

We're trying to develop a mixed-use facility, Holcom said. What happens with buildings like this, you get one company in there and if they fail, the project fails. What we've done is create a mixed-use facility that's diversified.

Holcom is currently searching for retail tenants and a seafood restaurant for his project. He said he also hopes to finish plans for a marina that will be attached to the development sometime next year.

An Astoria native, Holcom purchased the property after he returned from active duty in Iraq.

When you're gone for a year and come back and see the changes in Astoria, the development is incredible, he said. All of our guests so far have been out-of-towners from as far away as Chicago and Nashville.

Also planned on three acres near 39th Street is a live/work development in which light manufacturing ground-floor work space would be situated under second- and third-story residences. Developer Harry Henke did not return calls for comment about the project.

Bartlett said development in Astoria's east end isn't an anomaly, but is indicative of an increasing amount of private investment in the city overall.

Safeway opened its new 58,000-square-foot grocery store last spring, and we currently have three homes under construction at Mill Pond Village, he said.

Also located near the eastern side of town, Mill Pond Village is a 16-acre residential redevelopment on the site of what was once the Clatsop Mill.

Holcom said the redevelopment projects, like those on the city's east end, are likely just the beginning. I think Astoria's starting the change, he said. People are starting to see it again.


		JEFF LARSEN / P-I
	The 4-mile-long Astoria-Megler Bridge that crosses the Columbia River at Astoria, Ore., is a fine backdrop at sunset for a family photo.


		JEFF LARSEN / P-I
	The Pacific Ocean always seems to batter the south jetty of the Columbia River at Astoria. If you get too close, you get wet.


		JEFF LARSEN / P-I
	The Flavel House Museum in downtown Astoria was built as a home in 1885 by a Columbia River bar pilot who was the area's first millionaire.


		JEFF LARSEN / P-I
	The fully restored Astoria Column looms over the city and is like a beacon at night when it is lighted.


		JEFF LARSEN / P-I
	Sunset over the four-mile-long Astoria-Megler Bridge across the Columbia River.