Newberg sees steady growth
By NICOLE MONTESANO
(McMinnville) News-Register
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 10:19 AM PDT
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| The Allison Inn & Spa, a luxury hotel under construction in Newberg, is scheduled to open in September, and has already begun accepting reservations. The hotel also will feature a restaurant, Jory, that plans to rely on local foods, some of them grown onsite. |
NEWBERG (AP) — In a decade when other cities in Yamhill County were growing by wild leaps, Newberg never attained that same rosy glow and inflated allure. Its population increased slowly but steadily at a clip just a bit less than 3 percent a year, year by quiet year.
Now the glow has faded for other local cities. Infrastructure costs have shot up and the construction boom has faded out.
But Newberg is still quietly growing at the same slow-but-steady pace. In the process, it’s beginning to challenge McMinnville, which has traditionally boasted more cultural, civic and recreational amenities.
Recent developments include the Chehalem Glenn Golf Course, the Chehalem Historical Greenway, a slew of little bed and breakfast inns and a new cultural center now under construction. A luxury boutique hotel and restaurant is also scheduled to open in September.
The recession has certainly hurt. Some businesses have closed, and the city’s biggest employers, A-dec and White Birch Paper, have laid off a large number of workers in recent months.
But construction is holding up reasonably well, according to city Planning and Building Director Barton Brierley.
‘‘Newberg has fared quite a bit better than other cities,’’ he said. ‘‘In the last two months, we’ve issued permits for about 80 new homes, and that’s just something no one else is doing.’’
Officials in nearby Lafayette are blessing their foresight in not building construction fees into their maintenance budget, as the city hasn’t issued a building permit in months, and things aren’t much better in neighboring McMinnville.
McMinnville issued just four permits for new single-family homes in June. It has issued 20 permits for new single-family homes in the last 12 months.
Newberg, meanwhile, is watching the county’s first luxury wine country hotel go up. The Allison Inn & Spa, part of the Springbrook development, is expected to create about 200 jobs and draw a high-end tourist trade.
Several new commercial buildings are in the works this summer: A new insurance office, a dependency rehabilitation clinic and a new Alzheimer’s care facility, not to mention the multimillion-dollar cultural center, a longtime local dream.
The Springbrook master plan, approved last year, has won broad support for its ambitious mix of residential, commercial and office buildings, its luxury hotel and restaurant, its acres of park space and its extensive network of walking trails.
Expected to take a decade or more to fully build, the project encompasses 450 acres in all. The hotel and restaurant complex occupies 32 of those acres, and another 63 are being devoted to parks and trails.
Designed to honor the area’s agricultural history, it will include a restored historic school and cannery. It will also feature a retail village anchored by a public square. The cultural center has been planned since 1997, when the Newberg School District closed historic Central Elementary School and deeded it over to the Chehalem Park and Recreation District.
