TROUBLED WATERS.

Winter SUN sparkles on the blue water of Waldport's Alsea Bay, where beachfront homes offer endless views of waves tumbling into swirls of foam. Steller's jays and chickadees flit from thimbleberry bushes to Sitka spruce, and the rhododendrons are just beginning to bloom.

In downtown Waldport, where 101 meets Highway 34, oldtimers wearing baseball caps enjoy the Salisbury steak special at Leroy's Blue Whale, while across town at the Port of Alsea dock, fishermen board a skiff and head upriver in search of salmon. Nearby, a gallery owner flips the sign to "closed" and crosses the street for fish and chips.

What a great place to live, you might think. Many of Waldport's 1,750 residents thought so, too, before moving from California, Washington or the Willamette Valley to the town whose slogan is "Where the forest meets the sea." On the central coast they bought more house for less money and found a life free of smog, crowds and traffic.

Mark Campbell was one of them. A resident of Alaska for 22 years, Campbell moved his family to Waldport 3 1/2 years ago to run Crestview Hills Golf Club. "It looked like a nice place to raise a kid," he says.

Nice place to raise kids, for sure. But will they stay?

Waldport, like many small towns on the central coast, has plenty to offer. But on at least one front it falls short: jobs. The town has just two small manufacturing plants, no high-tech companies or major tourist attractions, and it's too far from the Valley to commute. For young people, in particular, it's tough to find work that'll cover a mortgage.

"I would hate to be a young couple today and try to raise a family in this area," says City Council president Gene Moore, who ran a business in Grants Pass before retiring to Waldport.

The lack of industry also poses economic challenges for the town in general. Although an infusion of newcomers, many of them from California, helped drive the economy for a few years, the migration has slowed. In many areas of town, "for sale" signs dot the streets, as properties turn over frequently. A slow tourism season this past summer didn't help matters.

With few concrete opportunities on the horizon, many residents are concerned about Waldport and the central coast's future.

"The economy is hanging on by its fingernails," says Peter Benjamin, president of the Waldport Chamber of Commerce and manager of the town's West Coast Bank branch.

To which former Chamber president Philip Spulnik adds, "We need a shot in the arm."

Walk around town and you get the sense that everyone's over 55 or under 18. Absent from the landscape are career-driven generation Xers and baby boomers, the likes of whom dash around Portland and Eugene in rush-hour traffic talking into cell phones. With few good jobs to lure them to the coast, they'd just as soon stay put in cities that can pay them well.

In Waldport, more money currently comes in from retirees' pensions and investments than from jobs.

It didn't used to be that way. From its founding in 1911 up to the 1970s, Waldport was a bustling timber and fishing town. Youngsters grew up knowing they could make a living felling trees, working at the mill or catching fish.

Today, the Oregon lumber industry, bombarded with environmental restrictions and shrinking forests, has decreased 80% to 90% from what it once was. Most logging has stopped on U.S. Forest Service land, which includes 75% of the forests in southern Lincoln County. All of the area's sawmills are gone.

Local fishermen are struggling to survive in the face of dwindling populations of perch, ling cod, sole and red snapper, and recent cutbacks in allowable catch of up to 85%.

Other potential employers include schools, but the Lincoln County School District, faced with budget shortages and declining enrollment, has cut staff over the last few years. At last count, 17 teaching positions were tagged for elimination for the upcoming school year.

Libraries, fire departments and the Oregon Coast Aquarium, institutions that elsewhere might offer good jobs, depend mostly on volunteers here, and most of the tourist shops that sell souvenirs, antiques or books are mom-and-pop shops with no paid employees. Bagging groceries and waiting tables are options in Waldport, but wages are low.

Although unemployment is down to 4% nationwide and only slightly higher in Oregon, Lincoln County which stretches from Lincoln City south to Yachats, reported 8.9% unemployment in December. Even at the height of the tourist season, the job rate is far below that of the bigger inland cities.

Starting a business, if you are so inclined, is a gamble in a town so dependent on tourism. One bad summer, and it's over. The risks are especially great with the vagaries of weather and road closures, such as the slide between Yachats and Florence that choked off South County business for months this winter.

Spulnik, a Waldport resident since 1968, has seen business drop over the past three years. Owner of a real estate company, an antiques shop and a storage locker facility, he believes diversification is the key to survival on the coast. But whereas a decade ago his storage lockers rented so quickly he added new units, today he has 60 vacancies.

Even on the golf course, business was down about 15% last season, and club owner Mark Campbell doesn't know whether to blame the weather or movie-star whale Keiko's departure from Newport for Iceland. Although locals do play the 10-hole course, Campbell says, 65% to 70% of his golfers are tourists visiting between May and October.

Compounding every business owner's problems is the town's location. "Waldport really is a bypass," Campbell says. Highway 34, the town's connection to I-5, is the windiest east-west route between the Valley and the coast. To avoid 34, many tourists, especially those driving RVs, will opt for Highway 126 to Florence or 20 to Newport. "A lot of times, Waldport and Yachats are left out of the loop."

There is good news in all this, and it's the indomitable spirit of the people who live in Waldport. Given the litany of challenges, you might expect the town's leaders to lose heart and give up. But in fact they're doing just the opposite, making moves to bring new prosperity to the one-stoplight town.

The state has pitched in to help. In December, the Oregon Economic and Community Development Department designated Waldport, Newport and the town of Toledo as the state's 38th enterprise zone. The zones, which last for 10 years, are designed to spur creation of new jobs in areas with economic need by offering property tax breaks to businesses that locate within them.

Waldport's leaders hope the enterprise zone will attract hotels and motels. Now, most of the area's lodging is in Yachats, eight miles south, and Newport, 16 miles north. The idea is that if people sleep in Waldport, they will eat and shop there, too.

Chris Chandler-DiTorrice, director of the Lincoln County Economic Development Alliance, shepherded the drive to create the enterprise zone. "There are plenty of possibilities for Waldport," she says. The city has unused industrial land, including 25 acres south of Waldport Elementary that are ready for development. The Port of Alsea also has property that could be used for light industry, technical support or other job-intensive businesses.

"The watch-word is family-wage jobs," Chamber president Peter Benjamin says.

But not everyone is convinced that the enterprise zone will provide those jobs. Gene Moore voted against the zone. Why build hotels and motels, which pay most employees minimum wage, he asks. "I don't see it as any advantage to Waldport," Moore says. "If we could bring in a high-tech company that pays $10 to $20 an hour, I'd be 100% behind it."

He can't imagine that high-tech companies would move to Waldport, though. "Why would they?"

When Moore ran a technology business in Grants Pass, a much larger city, it was too far from related businesses and, without a college nearby, it was hard to find skilled employees. "I am a businessman, but you've got to be realistic," he says.

DiTorrice concedes that hotels and motels don't offer high-wage jobs, but the room tax would help the city's economy. Currently, there's just one motel within the city limits.

As for technology startups? Even if they don't flock to the area, enhanced Internet connectivity is likely to increase employment opportunities. CoastNet, a new fiber optic network scheduled to be lit this spring, has the potential to link coastal towns to industrial centers via high-speed connections, network-to-network interfacing and video conferencing.

Fiber optics could enable businesses such as telephone service centers or technical support operations to locate on the coast, "If you've got an 800 number, it doesn't matter whether you're in Waldport or Kansas," Benjamin notes.

Other factors are bringing hope to Waldport. For the first time, people from the City and the Chamber of Commerce are working together to bring jobs to the town, Benjamin says. They've been meeting with city administrator Mike Dowsett, who helped neighboring Toledo develop an industrial park and initiate a downtown revitalization program.

Both Western Title and Lincoln Security Bank are building new branches in town. The sewer system, which overflows every winter when rain leaks into cracks in the old pipes, is being overhauled, and the city has been repairing its storm drain system to stop downtown streets from flooding.

As for the real estate churn? Although currently some houses stay on the market for a year or two, Spulnik, who owns Waldport Realty Company, believes it's part of a normal cycle. He's confident the economy will change and sales will pick back up.

Benjamin shares in his sense of optimism. "I think Waldport could start getting back to the thriving town it was back in the days of booming lumber," he says. "We're at the point that we have to get the ball rolling."

Nature is a strong point in the town's favor, With the ocean, the Alsea River and the forests to draw people, Waldport doesn't need to invent a painted rock or a theme park. "We have potential," says Mayor Kim Lehmann, who owns The Travel Agency in Newport. "We have something here that we can build on."

Judy Gibbs, who helped spearhead the now 3-year-old Waldport Heritage Museum, moved to the city as a child in 1954 and has lived there most of her life. Though Gibbs watched many of her classmates leave to find work, she says some have returned as retirees. Others never moved away.

Some Waldport families can even trace their lineage to the original early-20th-century settlers. "There's generations and generations here," Gibbs says.

Maybe it's that feeling of connection and stability that has always attracted people to the town. "Waldport has a sense of community I have never experienced anyplace else," Mayor Lehmann reports.

After a local youth was injured in a recent car accident, people gathered immediately to ask how they could help. "It was just such an outpouring of emo-tion that it made you feel a part of something," says Lehmann.

Though the economy is troubling, people come to the coast for other reasons, she says. Young people may not find what they need in Waldport right out of high school, but "perhaps that is not the time in their life to live here."

Although Waldport may remain primarily a retirement town forever, each newcomer brings a bit of renewed life to the town. And maybe that sums up what's in the cards for the near future, say, 10 years from now.

"I don't think Waldport will change that much," Lehmann says, "but I do see more tourists." More motels and restaurants, she hopes, and a downtown area full and active, a little more like Seaside but less glitz.

Ultimately, Lehmann says, "I just see it as it is, only better.

Article Details

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Author:	Lick, Sue Fagalde
Publication:	Oregon Business
Date:	Apr 1, 2000
Words:	1993
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