Over the past few years, tremendous efforts by individuals, businesses, and groups have brought incredible improvements and considerable changes to the Chehalis downtown area.
The “Experience Chehalis” project, empowered by the Chehalis Community Renaissance Team (City of Chehalis), has brought the addition of artwork, increased storefront curb appeal, identification of grant funding sources, coordination between businesses, and a more tangible downtown “presence,” both digitally and in the real-life sense of marketing.
But a new business group in Chehalis is budding and gaining steam — and maybe in an area that you hadn’t thought to expect it.
Thursday night, I attended the second meeting of the newly formed State Avenue Business District group, as an invited guest. If you aren’t familiar, State Avenue in Chehalis runs from Main Street all the way north to Chamber Way, near the historic Westside Chehalis district, parallel to the same railroad tracks where the Chehalis story begins.
This month’s meeting was held at the Moerke & Sons office on State Avenue. Representatives from various State Avenue businesses were led through an array of topics by unofficial leader Rick Fisher, owner of Classic Interiors.
Topics ranged from designating a representative to speak with city officials about improving State Avenue Street lighting, replacing older bulbs with updated LEDs, to topics of joint advertising and wayfinding solutions for the business district. The group also toyed with the idea of exploring the collective purchase of Christmas decorations for their street.
You might find yourself thinking at this point: Ok, I get why we push business to our downtown core — retail, sales tax revenue, etc. So, why State Avenue?
Well, I think Rick Fisher raised a really good point as the group discussed the possibility of hanging flower baskets and the potential for the city to assist with watering them as they do in the downtown core.
“Look at the sales tax generated by State Avenue,” Fisher reasoned. “If Cascade Trader sells one piece of equipment, that’s probably more sales tax generated in one purchase than all of the sales tax generated in all of downtown for a whole day.”
He reasoned further: “Why can’t we ask for help with flowers?”
Fisher’s point really set me back on heels for a second. I mean, after all, he was right. I stopped to think about all of the longtime businesses serving Chehalis and outlying areas from State Avenue locations — National Frozen Foods, Palmer Lumber, West Coast Mills, Tires Inc., Cascade Trader, L&E Bottling, Cenex. The list goes on.
When you consider the jobs created by State Avenue businesses, the contractors and businesses provided for by State Avenue industrial sources, and the homeowners served by State Avenue businesses, it’s pretty incredible. Tires, well drilling, logging wear, plumbing, trucking, transport, fuel, building materials, and infrastructure — they’re all things that are integral for our area’s economy and growth across all sectors.
We would probably be hard pressed to find a local resident, homeowner or business owner that hasn’t had direct contact with a State Avenue business. And it wouldn’t be a longshot to say that many other businesses all over Lewis County are able to thrive, in part, because of these longstanding local providers.
While our downtown Chehalis core is one hundred percent, unequivocally something to be proud of and promote, that downtown is not where the Chehalis story truly began.
The Chehalis story begins with a group of businessmen, determined to bring a railroad through “Saunder’s Bottom,” flagging down trains with red flags to convince the railroad to build a depot and re-route the rail line. The City of Chehalis story began with a single warehouse along the tracks. Historic downtown and the upper crust westside Chehalis residential areas developed around the industries that began on the railroad tracks — the same tracks that run along State Avenue today. It began with industry.
In fact, the third courthouse in Lewis County was the first one built in Chehalis after the county seat moved to Claquato. That first courthouse in Chehalis was built on State Avenue, a block north of Main Street.
State Avenue continues to define the cutting-edge history of Chehalis, now that retail cannabis storefront — Old Toby — and a cannabis grower and processor — The Green Vault — among others, are thriving on State Avenue as the city’s first legal cannabis businesses, despite Lewis County’s de facto cannabis moratorium.
As time has gone on, and our local economy has grown, so have the needs of businesses. Now, we’re fortunate to have the Port of Chehalis and other business and industrial areas for large operations to call home — but the far-reaching historical economic impact of State Avenue remains.
I’m excited to watch this group continue to formalize and see them grow. I can’t wait to see how they choose to highlight their contributions to our local economy as they ramp up their efforts to increase both formal recognition and regional patronage.
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Brittany Voie is a columnist for The Chronicle. She lives south of Chehalis with her husband and two young sons. She welcomes correspondence from the community at voiedevelopment@comcast.net.
