Chamber of Commerce

Rainier's 2008 Chamber of Commerce

P.O. Box 1085

Rainier, OR 97048

503-556-7212

Meetings

2nd Thursday each month

6:00 p.m.

Rainier United Methodist Church

Lower Level Meeting Room

Optional Dinner: $5.50

May 8, 2008

School Board Recall Forum

Click HERE for more

For Information Contact:

Hank Bartholomew, President

503-556-0978

E-Mail Us

A Note from

Mayor Jerry Cole

Incorporated in 1885, Rainier has a long history of independence and a working relationship with our local resources to provide jobs and income to our residents and community. A lot has changed over the years, especially during the last 10 to 20 years with the declining timber industry, commercial fishing and the closure of the Trojan Power Plant. But with challenges come opportunities.

During the past ten years the community has rallied to improve its tax base, create local family wage paying jobs and improve quality of life factors that concentrate on the City's location on the Columbia River. Recently the City has made approximately $4.75 million worth of improvements to its water system, $685,000 improvements to the Rainier Marina, $500,000 Phase I Project for Riverfront Park, $725,000 new senior center, $3 million low/moderate senior housing project, and more than $3 million in transportation improvements. Many other projects are currently funded and will be built during the next 2 - 5 years. Also, US Gypsum recently completed a new $140 million sheetrock manufacturing facility employing more than 150 workers with room to expand.

These are just some of the things being undertaken to provide a good, safe and enjoyable place to work and live in the City of Rainier. Rainier recently received a Community Progress Award from the Rural Development Initiatives (RDI) recognizing our community's efforts and progress during the past 10 years.

I encourage you to view our website and contact me or City Hall with any questions or comments you may have.

Sincerely,

Jerry Cole

Mayor

P.S.: For more about Rainier, click HERE

Oregon Offtrack I Rainier

Industrial town has heart and soul

by FOSTER CHURCH

SPECIAL TO THE OREGONIAN

January 14, 2007

The best way to appreciate Rainier is at night from a distance. Take U.S. 30 west out of town to the viewpoint on the hill beyond the bridge. Below spreads a dazzling panorama of lights, humming industrial plants spewing white smoke and the dark expanse of the Columbia River.

This may not be what Lewis and Clark saw when they canoed down the river in 1805 and returned in 1806,but it is stirring and spectacular nonetheless.

Rainer, population about 1,700, isn’t stirring and spectacular. It’s definitely a poor cousin to vibrant Longview directly across the Columbia River in Washington. Like most Oregon towns that face river or ocean, Rainier tumbles down a hill to the water. This makes for lots of residences with spectacular views, and lots of steep hills.

The path of U.S. 30, right through the heart of the city, means most people whiz by without stopping. Before spending a few days there, my image of the town was shabby roadside businesses and a big white-columned City Hall — a town, it seemed, without a heart and not much soul

Actually, Rainier society is optimistic and pressing forward. The town has a handsome new senior center and nearby senior housing, Riverfront Park has been redeveloped, and a mile-long river walk is under construction.

Over a weekend, I attended a high school band concert and explored atmospheric back roads and cemeteries buried in the rich green landscape beyond the highway. I ate a big crab sandwich at the Interstate Tavern, Mexican food at El Tapatio, and breakfast at the Cornerstone, a bright, airy cafe near the riverfront. I jogged along the river on the new river walk and drove out on Dibblee Point to watch behemoth ships, slow and implacable as river gods, push up and down the river. I also learned how a tugboat is put together.

Rainier’s only motel, the Rainier Budget Inn, is a block off the main road near the river and looks like a place that’s had heavy use and not much time off for years. A new owner is fixing it up now, and my room was fine.

The town has a gritty, callused feel. Everyone wears jeans, and gregarious working people populate the taverns drinking beer— in one place from quart Mason jars. It’s a boom-and-bust place. For years, lumber and fishing were the economy’s mainstays. Those industries waned and the Trojan Nuclear Plant supplied a new employment base. Portland General Electric’s decision in the ‘90s to mothball the plant shook Rainier badly, but U.S. Gypsum Co. put some back to work when it built a plant nearby.

Most of Rainier’s products come the old-fashioned way — sawed, pulverized, welded or hammered together. This isn’t the information economy. Consider tugboats, the tough little craft that labor on the water, pulling and grunting. Watching one of them haul a towering metal hulk down the river is a stirring sight

Tugs also are born in Rainier. Foss Maritime’s Rainier shipyard builds two a year and has doubled its size since 2003. Foss doesn’t permit sightseers in the boatyard, but anyone can go upstairs to the company’s offices and view the shipyard and the river from the broad windows. You also can stand behind a cyclone fence near the main building and observe a Dolphin tugboat take shape.

Dolphin tugs are little ruffians that sit close to the water, develop 5,000 horsepower and are pushed around by dual thrusters that allow then to turn on a dime and move sideways.

Rainier lacks a local newspaper, but in its place is Hank Bartholomew. He and Shirley Bartholomew, his wife, came to Rainier in 1997 from Washington, D.C., where he was a high-ranking career executive in the U.S. Interior Department and she worked in congressional offices on Capitol Hill They became local activists, and he started a Web site, Friends of Rainier, a flavorful mix of local news, tips, information about local activities, lots of links and articles from local newspapers.

At www.rainier97048.org, the site has become a community bulletin board, generating some 2,000 hits a day.

One more thing about Rainier: the view. Residents are reminded constantly that this is not a boutique town by the huge industrial plants and the Port of Longview across the river. Some find the belching smoke, the acres of buildings, the mountains of wood chips and the constant push and tug along the river a blight.

Others, myself included, find it wonderfully scenic, a constant blast of energy and life. Go to Rainier for the smokestacks and the kind of people who build them and work them.

Foster Church, whose Offtrack stories appear on the second Sunday of each month, can be reached at 503-246-7428 or by e-mail at: fosterchurch@qwest.net