This wonderfully detailed rendering displays our vision for celebrating and honoring Indigenous People’s heritage, restored native habitats, and provides close-up public access to view Willamette Falls. It also honors over 135 years of industrial heritage and the thousands of local residents who worked here with the adaptive reuse of a few selected buildings. These goals complement each other with an aesthetic blending of nature, culture and history.

As depicted in the rendering, about three-fourths of the island could be opened up for green space, habitat restoration, connection to the river, cultural history displays, and pathways for viewing the locks and the Falls.

On January 30th an early morning fire ripped through the #4 Finishing Room & Warehouse at the long-closed Blue Heron paper mill.

Willamette Falls Locks Authority (WFLA) Executive Director Reed Wagner, has been knocking over many of the bureaucratic dominos that lead to being a successful public corporation.

For fifteen years, George Hall was the main man at the paper mill’s steam plant.