How many remember the proposal in the early 1990s to build the Scottish-themed Skye Village at Exit 63 off Interstate 5? Developers built a gas station in 1994 that closed in 2002 due to bankruptcy. (New owners have since reopened it.)
Last Thursday, at the annual Big Toledo Community Meeting, I realized that Toledo has created in a hodgepodge fashion what was proposed nearly 25 years ago. Rather than Scottish-themed, Toledo’s community seems more earth-focused with emphasis on artists, agritourism, aviation, and soon — we hope — Wi-Fi hotspots, high-tech companies and business startups.
We have artists, including three on the ARTrails tours, the 505 Art Gallery downtown and April’s Battle of the CowlArtz between Winlock and Toledo high school students. Writers and poets speak at our community library. Musicians gather at Camp Singing Wind for fun and fundraisers.
Artists are painting murals on walls and the water tower; others teach piano and dance lessons. Vintners grow grapes for fine wines. Elementary students plant, tend and harvest a community garden, while organic farmers till the soil and offer back-to-nature classes.
Trails are being developed, and the Esther Borte Walk in the Park honors a lifelong resident and raises money for the city park. A nonprofit called Common Ground Toledo aims to beautify the downtown with greenery, while an “Honorable Society of Makers” may connect artisans willing to share skills, tools and perhaps, eventually, a common space.
Toledo, a gateway to Mount St. Helens, offers bed and breakfasts for people and pets, a place for pilots to land at the Ed Carlson Memorial Field, and opportunities for skydivers to drift gently beneath colorful parachutes while gazing at two majestic mountains overlooking Cowlitz Prairie.
Volunteers organize annual Cheese Days events, fishing derbies, wine tours, a bluegrass festival, threshing bee, the Cowlitz Pow Wow and soon a resurrected Farmers Market.
Toledo Telephone Co.’s installation of high-speed internet created opportunities for advanced technology. Toledo and four other communities nationwide were selected from among 300 applicants to receive help through the federal Cool and Connected Program, which focuses on combining broadband services with local culture, history, and recreation to encourage economic development.
Nobody knows exactly how Toledo will develop, but the outlook is optimistic — especially in light of the devastation felt after the pharmacy and hardware store closed in January 2011, only a month after a devastating Christmas Day fire demolished two downtown businesses. But from the ashes arose Vision:Toledo, which hosted the Big Community Meeting and meets regularly to keep people connected in, as the organization says, “the other Toledo, the other Washington.”
Toledo Telephone
I’ve complained about Toledo customers paying high rates for telephone and internet service. Yet I found myself pleasantly surprised recently when Toledo Telephone’s Sheila Richardson emailed to say bundling our services could save us $20 a month. How often does a company help you save money? Nice.
Senior Centers
The transition team assigned to find ways to keep Lewis County’s five senior centers running outside of county government appears to be making progress. It looks like the centers will operate under the nonprofit Lewis County Seniors, which formed in 2002 and has handled fundraising for the centers since then. The group may open a thrift shop to raise money.
I still believe county commissioners could have found $376,000 to continue funding the centers, as the county has done since the early 1980s. I hope the senior centers not only survive but thrive.
Yet a comment by Susan Hutchison, Washington State Republican Party chairwoman, echoes in my mind.
“A conservative understands that good things take a long, long time to build and they are destroyed very quickly,” she said.
Let’s hope that doesn’t happen here.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
