HASSO HERING

A perspective from Oregon’s mid-Willamette Valley

Glancing at the river from an aging pier

Written August 15th, 2021 by Hasso Hering

On the Broadalbin Street pier on Sunday evening.

On the wooden pier jutting out over the Willamette River at the foot of Broadalbin Street in Albany on Sunday night, this question asked itself: When is this structure going to get some work done to make it last another 30 years?

This pier and the one farther west in Monteith Riverpark are supposed to be refurbished as part of the Willamette Riverfront Project being planned by CARA,  Albany’s downtown urban renewal program.

Consultants are working up designs for several elements of the overall riverfront renovation including the river overlooks. But nothing has been heard on this for months.

The last three monthly meetings of the CARA advisory board have been canceled, ostensibly because there was nothing to discuss. Councilman Dick Olsen tried to get the council to ask the CARA board to meet this month, but his motion was voted down 2-4. Only Councilwoman Matilda Novak backed him up.

Seth Sherry, the economic development manager, said contracts are being worked up on two other CARA projects, the rebuilding of the St. Francis building and the former Wells Fargo branch, and he had sent councilors updates on those efforts. But apparently not everybody got them.

As for the two piers, only the one pictured above has much utility. You can stand there and watch the river, including for now the scrap-wood creations of Albany folk artist Nate Vanek on the gravel bar below.

The other pier overlooks mostly a gravel bar and bushes. Before the river changed course, that pier had stairs down to a floating dock that once was home to the Willamette Queen riverboat, which left for Salem more than 20 years ago and didn’t come back. (At last report it was for sale.) The Albany reach of the Willamette had become too shallow for the craft, which ran aground more than once, if memory serves.

In any case, the wooden planks of the piers have been weathering. They look brittle and old. And while it seems safe enough to walk out there over the riverbank, when you step on some of the planks there’s a bit of give, and it’s a long way down.

In its map of potential riverfront changes, the consulting design firm Walker Macy said: “The existing river piers will be restored and updated with new seating and interpretive signs that describe the history of the piers and the Albany waterfront.”

Well, seating may not be necessary. But replacing worn boards and railings would be good. (hh)

 

 





7 responses to “Glancing at the river from an aging pier”

  1. Bob Woods says:

    Outstanding picture Hasso.

    And your comments are spot on. Those piers need to be preserved because they bring the river closer to people, especially to us that are mobility impaired and can’t wade out any longer.

  2. Gordon L. Shadle says:

    CARA? Gee, maybe that’s a clue.

    Two different mindsets are at work here.

    Slow government deliberation, decision making, and execution is a feature, not a bug. It’s called positive slowness and it is viewed as a virtue.

    But viewed from the taxpayer perspective, impatience with slowness is a virtue, too.

    How is the tension resolved? Determine who “owns” the enterprise. And when it comes to CARA, those who pay the taxes have never been the owners.

  3. JJ Jack-of-All Trades Johnny Jack Hartman says:

    The author’s premise is: the pier is worth saving. The rest of the argument is built around the original premise. Nothing incorrect about the logic flow, with the exception that the original premise could just as easily be wrong. Given a high likelihood that the vast majority of Albany citizens have either never stood out on the pier, or who may have stood out on the pier once or twice in their lifetimes, the importance of preservation of the pier comes into question…all the more so with receding water levels. Given recent experience, soon we will only be able to view a trickle of water slicing through a large sandbar. The point being, there is nothing sacrosanct about this pier. Albany would likely not collapse into moral rot if the pier were to disa-pier.

    • Gordon L. Shadle says:

      Good comment. I agree.

      The narrative that these piers bring “the river closer to the people” is laughable.

      But most of CARA expenditures are wasteful. In this case, the tax increment is negative and the payback period is infinity.

      Would any taxpayer in Albany make that a similar “investment” in their own lives? Of course not.

 

 
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