Happy Birthday, Corvallis!

That's right, kids... today is our town's 150th birthday. For those of you keeping track at home, that makes this a sesquicentennial celebration. If Corvallis went to New China Buffet today, it would get a free meal and a cake! If Corvallis went to McGrath's Fish House, it would get a birthday song while wearing a silly fish hat! Of course, there's also the ubiquitous sombrero with Polaroid photo at several Mexican places in town and Evergreen Indian Restaurant gave Corvallist kid a rose on her birthday one year.

All restaurant weirdness aside, there are several events planned throughout the year to celebrate our little town growing up, starting with a kickoff party today at ArtCentric from 3 to 5 p.m. There is a website dedicated to the sesquicentennial celebration that you may as well bookmark now, because this party will continue throughout the year. You don't want to be left out.

Corvallis was incorporated on January 28, 1857. It shares a birthday with Alan Alda, Elijah Wood and Sarah McLachlan, among various other events. Corvallis's Aquarian horoscope indicates that the coming year will bring "obstacles, duties, and responsibilities that overwhelm you." Fortunately, Corvallis still feels like a young town and won't have to be put in a home anytime soon.

As a side note, this blog turned one a few weeks ago. For those of you keeping track at home, that's uh... nothing, apparently. Anyway, time for cake!

Corvallis Inn on the Outs

Earlier this month, the Corvallis Inn closed its doors permanently. It was Nendel's when my wedding reception was held there back in 1992, then became a Ramada Inn and was run straight into the ground. When Ramada could no longer pay the mortgage, the bank took over and the hotel was operated as the Corvallis Inn... but relatively unsuccessfully. I imagine that the older-style hotel just couldn't keep up with the competition from newer hotels like the Hilton Garden Inn down on campus, the upscale Salbasgeon Suites, or the Holiday Inn Express on the banks Willamette.

Now that the hotel is officially closed, the property has been sold to Regency Centers, along with the former Laidlaw school bus garage and parking lot. The existing buildings will be demolished, with plans to build a 90,000 ft² shopping center in this city block.

Good. This is exactly the type of development that benefits Corvallis. It replaces an existing eyesore (the Laidlaw building is horrible) and fills in what would otherwise be a scar-like gap in an existing commercial area. It won't endanger any species, it won't encroach on greenbelt land, it doesn't expand the Corvallis boundaries into the surrounding hills, and it won't change the overall neighborhood. Ninth Street isn't a pretty little Victorian neighborhood; it's a collection of strip malls and fast food restaurants. Nobody has to worry about increased traffic being routed through the play areas of local children.

I know many in Corvallis would prefer that we never build anything other than quaint little shops, but that isn't realistic. I'm not in favor of unchecked development and am quite happy that our city council blocks developments that don't fit with our town -- Walmart will never be built here unless they agree to build in Southtown, which doesn't fit their master plan -- but the city does have valid reasons for building the tax base. Someone has to pay for all those bike lanes! This is the perfect type of development to bring to town.

I missed this little gem last week!

Thursday morning, while sitting in class on campus, a siren went off. It seemed louder than a fire siren, and for a few moments, we were debating whether or not it was a fire drill. Really, we were hoping for an excuse to escape this particular class, where the graduate student teaching the class basically reads her Power Point slides for an eternal 90 minutes.

While scanning through the online Gazette-Times archives to see what I've missed the past few days, I discovered this article about the mystery siren. Apparently, it's a Cold War-era civil defense siren intended to warn us all of a potential nuclear attack. The siren sat forgotten atop Covell Hall for decades, until some prankster found out how to set it off. It also went off on New Year's Eve, but I either live too far from campus to have heard it or assumed it was a fire somewhere. Covell Hall also has a genuine bomb shelter in the basement. One of my classes is in Covell Hall. Now I have to find the bomb shelter tomorrow after class.

I lived in the Midwest for a while in a town that tested their tornado siren every month. I thought it was the coolest thing. My coworkers would cackle at me whenever I ran outside to listen. (Who can blame them? What a dorky thing to do!) The best part was that they also had a protocol for incoming nuclear attack, and would test that portion quarterly. This would've been 1996 or so, and they were still proving to the townspeople that they were ready to warn them of Soviet attack. Way to go, rural paranoid America!

Now that our own air raid siren has been discovered, it is being shipped to Astoria to be used as a tsunami warning device. What a shame. I was all ready to run outside the next time it went off in the middle of class.

Want to save the whales?

Actually, efforts are being made to save species a little closer to home.

Monday night, from 6 to 8 p.m., there will be a public meeting to discuss the Benton County Prairie Species Habitat Conservation Plan being developed to "balance the needs between conservation and economic development" regarding several threatened and endangered species native to the Willamette Valley. The meeting will be held at the Benton Plaza, basement meeting room, at the corner of 4th and Monroe downtown.

School delayed again...

Reminder to other absent-minded parents: Check the school emergency closure information before you take your kids to school. (Oops.) You can also check the weather information line at 541-757-4555.

I realized something was amiss when I was driving back down the hill from Crescent Valley (where Corvallist kid has orchestra early mornings) and there wasn't a single school bus. Usually I pass one or two. Not many cars, either. I was headed down to campus myself, but thought I'd better stop by the house and check the messages. Sure enough, a plaintive message. "Mom? Did you go to school already? I'll wait ten minutes and call dad."

The roads are treacherous. It's raining, but the rain is freezing as it lands, so there's a giant sheet of ice over everything. Made it sort of fun coming back down Highland Drive. Definitely a Duh Moment for yours truly today.

EDIT: And now it's snowing again! Oregon State is also closed until 11 a.m. and I'm going back to bed. Yay!

What to do with the Whiteside

The Whiteside Theatre in downtown Corvallis has been closed for nearly five years, which is a real shame. It was a grand old theater that managed to escape the fate of so many other grand old theaters whose screens have been carved up into smaller theaters to better satisfy the masses, who can no longer live with just one screen showing Rocky 27 at a time.

Sadly, it will probably never be used as a movie theater again. The theater is currently owned by Regal Cinemas, who shut down the theater because of maintenance costs, then slapped a provision on the property that forbids any new owner from showing first-run movies there, as long as Regal is still operating their theater on NW 9th Street. I suppose I can't blame them, really, considering that the Ninth Street Cinemas are of poor enough quality that a kid holding a hand-held DVD player on a street corner poses serious competition.

It's also a shame that the property was too expensive and unwieldy for the owners of the Avalon and Darkside theaters. Wouldn't it have been lovely to see people who love cinema running such a place? Ah well. We should all be grateful that they went ahead and plunked their cute little theaters into the heart of downtown.

Currently, the Whiteside Theatre is being actively pursued by two parties: Whiteside Partners LLC and Walt Griffiths. Whiteside Partners LLC currently has a contract to buy the theater, but there have been roadblocks to their development plan put up by the city because of the theater's historical designation. They want to convert the theater into shops downstairs and a restaurant and bar upstairs, but the construction would alter the building slightly, so the City Council initially blocked the development. Whiteside Partners LLC filed an appeal, which will be heard at a council meeting this week.

Griffiths wants to buy the property under the banner of his nonprofit Christian ministry and turn it into a "Christian outreach center that would transform lives." He originally asked Regal to donate the property to him, which might have transformed his life quite a bit. Hey, it never hurts to ask, right?

I'd personally rather see the theater go to an organization that will actually pay taxes to the city and that can be frequented by all Corvallis residents. (Except the bar, natch.) While there are some issues with Whiteside Partners' current plan, I'm hopeful that they will find a compromise with the City Council this week. If you want to weigh in with your opinion, the City Council meeting is Tuesday, January 16th at 7:30 p.m. in the upstairs meeting room at the downtown fire station.

Flirting with snow

Mother Nature got the timing right this time, at least. But all my snow has already melted. Such a shame! I know Corvallist kid was disappointed that the snow didn't start falling until 20 minutes before school started.

Now comes the yucky part. For the next few days, overnight lows are going to be in the 18° range. I am one of the lucky folks who gets to be out at 4 a.m. chipping ice off my car and trying to avoid black ice. I like winter -- like it better than summer, in fact -- but I like it above 30°.

Yeah, yeah... gripe, gripe, gripe. Bundle up!

Back in Blog Mode

My winter break from school turned into a sort of mental break from all things controversial and intellectually taxing. I have not only neglected my tens of readers here; I have neglected email, willfully failed to keep up with the news, and (this is pathetic) still have Christmas presents to mail. I suppose it is no small feat that I worked 60 hours per week for the past few weeks, however, with a minor road trip crammed into my final two consecutive days off for the forseeable future.

Now that school is back in session and my schedule predictably weird once more, I hope to carve out enough time for at least a few posts each week. Hopefully you'll still carve out time to read 'em.

I've missed a few big stories in town and will attempt to catch up in the next few days. The fate of the Whiteside Theater is still undetermined, District Attorney Scott Heiser has resigned due to conflicts with Circuit Court Judge Janet Holcomb and two candidates are now vying for his position, the owners of Albright and Raw are throwing in the towel and closing up shop, and murder suspect Joel Patrick Courtney has been deemed mentally competent for court in the Brooke Wilberger case.

Lots of relatively minor stories as well, such as the proposed new riverfront park behind Michael's Landing in the area of the boat ramp. People already treat this area like a park, camping out in chairs along the river, especially during any type of event such as the July 4th fireworks or OSU crewing meets. Might as well make it official and bring back some native grasses, as opposed to the current mud/gravel mix. However, the Oregon Department of Transportion currently owns a portion of the land, designated as a possible landing site for the Highway 34 bridge revision. So far, they seem amenable to the idea of selling the land to the city. Corvallis only has about 35 parks already, so we desperately need another. Okay, not so desperately... but the parks are among the reasons Corvallis is so darn livable, so adding another is always a good idea.