Burn it or save the bones?

WAITSBURG - City Clerk Randy Hinchliffe has the approvals in place and now it's up to the City Council to decide at their regular monthly meeting Wednesday night whether to allow Fire District No. 2 to use the old apple warehouse or "bunk house" east of the McGregor plant to for a training exercise - a firefighting training exercise.

That would mean the 90-year-old building, which was deemed by a Portlandbased engineer several years ago to have good "bones," to be burned to the ground, its remains to be shoved into its own basement and filled.

Hinchliffe, who has obtained approval from the city's insurance carrier and from the Port of Columbia (owner of the adjacent railroad tracks) for the building's incineration, said the aging structure is just too much of a liability to the city, which can't afford the cost of removing it. It would cost too much money to rebuild it.

But former city councilman Leroy Cunning, who has had various suggested uses for the building in the past, has a different idea. If the city doesn't have the time or inclination to go after grant money to, say, start a business incubator in a renovated "bunk house," why not let volunteers salvage the large-dimension lumber.

Some of the lumber, which is still in decent shape and would be expensive to buy, could be used to building fire escape stairs on city-owned Main Street buildings such as City Hall and the Weller Library so that their second stories could meet code and be used to generate revenues.

Cunningham, said all it would take is a group of interested salvagers, a $170-a- day rented lift or crane and liability waivers/hold harmless documents for the city to take down the roof and save the lumber and siding.

Asked what he thought of that notion, Hinchliffe said he would be open to it but leave it up to the council.

"I don't see why not," Hinchliffe said. "We would provide a certain number of days for the scrapping and burn what's left. That's another avenue."

According to local residents who remember the building's history, it is believed to have been erected in the early 1920s and used by Moore Brothers as an apple warehouse in the days the area had orchards.

In the 1960s and 1970s, it became known as the "bunk house" because of the migrants who lived there and worked at the cannery that has since become the McGregor plant. Since the late 1980s, it has stood abandoned and been vulnerable to vandalism and decay.

When he was still on the council more than a year ago, Cunningham showed it to a Portland-based engineer who said the foundation was sound and the structure could be rebuilt. But others have noted that would be an expensive proposition.

The issue is on the council's agenda for the 7 p.m. meeting at the Lions Club Building Wednesday.