Do you have a vision for Sweet Home?
That’s been a looming question for years here, as various groups have formed to improve the downtown, to attract industry, to create jobs. A lot of it has really amounted to little more than well-intentioned discussion, but not all.
Some of the recent opportunities that have come down the pike for Sweet Home have actually had legs.
We’ve discussed them frequently in the pages of this newspaper, so readers should be familiar with them.
One is the community forest and riverside trail linking Sweet Home with the Willamette National Forest, proposed by the Governor’s Solutions Team, whose focus was to help Sweet Home establish recreational, economically and environmentally responsible and viable use of the forests east of town.
We hosted the Livability Initiative, another effort to improve things here. If Sweet Home’s leaders can focus their attention and resources on doing the groundwork necessary, there’s government grant funding and help available to us in a wide variety of sectors – transportation, housing, lodging, development of forest resources, culture, public health, coordination of policies and investment in the community.
And there are golden opportunities presented by the properties formerly owned by the Western States Land Reliance Trust, both the old Weyerhaeuser mill site south of Main Street and east of 18th Avenue, and the adjoining nearly 220 acres of Knife River land located between the north edge of town and the south bank of the South Santiam River between 22nd Avenue and Clark Mill Road.
The county is working with the Sweet Home Economic Development Group to grant the Knife River portion of the property to SHEDG.
Here’s where you come in.
As we report in two stories that begin on page 1 of today’s newspaper, in the next week local residents will have two opportunities to learn more about what’s happening with all of the what we’ve described above.
SHEDG is hosting a public meeting from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, June 23, at Sunshine Industries, 1333 Clark Mill Road, to talk with the public about what the economic development organization is considering doing with those 200-plus acres of forestland, ponds, meadows and riverfront property. Various uses, such as camping, trails, a concert venue and others have been proposed.
Are you interested in what could be done with that property? This is your chance. Show up.
The second opportunity is a Share Fair that will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, June 29, at the Sweet Home Community Center, 880 18th Ave.
This is a chance to find out what plans are in the works for the community forest, what’s going on with the Sheep Creek Project that is expected to shut down Highway 20 for up to six weeks immediately after the Oregon Jamboree, what’s happening with local efforts to boost tourist traffic in our area, what’s happening with that mill project mentioned above, what’s happening and what needs to happen with the Livability Initiative, and much, much more.
You, an individual member of the public, are invited to show up, wander from table to table, ask questions and state your opinions.
We hope the leaders of Sweet Home, official or otherwise, make it to these two events. Recent events, such as the forced retirement of our longtime city manager, Craig Martin, who was heavily involved in many of these efforts, suggests that the knowledge of and appreciation for what’s happening in some of these areas is not well developed among some of our elected officials. It should be.
But it’s not just them. Any of us who want to see Sweet Home develop local jobs and industries, who want to cash in on some of those opportunities presented by Livability and the former WSLRT properties need to take advantage of these opportunities.