The Pendleton Downtown Association now has downtown home.
A nonprofit organization dedicated to helping businesses in Pendleton’s downtown area, the association now has a physical presence on the corner of Main Street and Emigrant Avenue, where Sister’s Cafe used to be located.
The association also has person to staff the office and hold regular hours, a new development for an organization that had previously been all-volunteer.
The association’s attempt at prominence is being led by Fred Bradbury, the owner of Elite Guns & Bows and the association’s president, who raised $100,000 in grants to rent an office and hire a staff member.
Helping move furniture and hang up pictures Wednesday afternoon, Bradbury said establishing a downtown office gave the association a way to better serve its 57 members.
“I don’t want to work out of a basement,” he joked.
Jill Thorne, a downtown building owner and a member of the association, said it was symbolic that the association’s office is now featured on the ground floor of the St. George Plaza, a building that was formerly the ramshackle Temple Hotel before developer Al Plute restored it.
Thorne said the community has rallied around the downtown as a whole in a similar way, with the area now boasting an occupancy rate better than 90 percent.
“We’re just trying to take the next step forward to get the economy going,” she said.
The person tasked with helping the downtown association take the next step forward is also one of the newest people to town.
The association hired Molly Turner to act as the association’s program manager through the Resource Assistance and Rural Environments program, an AmeriCorps program administered through the University of Oregon that places interns in community development roles across the state.
Turner will spend the next 11 months figuring out ways to promote organized events around the downtown area.
A native of Corvallis, Turner recently graduated from the University of Oregon with a double major in biological anthropology and Spanish with a minor in planning, public policy and management.
Turner said she’d never been to Pendleton before applying for the placement, but she was attracted to the region’s outdoor opportunities and the city’s reputation for friendliness, which the town has lived up to so far.
The association’s office is open 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday through Friday.
Originally Published in East Oregonian
211 S.E. Byers Ave.
Pendleton, OR 97801
Phone: 800-522-0255