Is the Coos Bay/Florence area the "Last Hidden Gem" of Oregon?? (Eugene: appointed, credit)

[Metlakatla]

Anyone who lives here or even visits on a regular basis knows where most of the retirees are coming from. Not everything is dependent on Google. I'll go ahead and accept the prevailing observations of myself and pretty much everyone else who lives here. You keep harping on the use of the word droves, but it's a relative term that you don't get to define. If you want to look up migration data, you can start here:

https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-t...migration-data

Damn, I sure suffered this summer with the weather. Months of sunny blue skies and no smoke from the fires. I don't know how much longer I can stand it. It's horrible now as well, with flowers blooming in droves instead of everything all dead, dry, and cold.

[happygrrrl]

Originally Posted by pdxMIKEpdx

Also, "retirees" don't sit around in a stupor sitting around WalMart wearing Depends and drooling all over their mobility scooters all day, dreaming about going to Shari's for a discounted senior citizen's dinner every evening at 4pm.....

Thanks the laugh, of course now I need to go change my Depends.

[Larry Caldwell]

Originally Posted by pdxMIKEpdx

Also, "retirees" don't sit around in a stupor sitting around WalMart wearing Depends and drooling all over their mobility scooters all day, dreaming about going to Shari's for a discounted senior citizen's dinner every evening at 4pm.....

Wait...I can get a discounted senior dinner at Sharis? Why did I not know this? Frugal is as frugal does. I shop at Coastal Farm and Ranch on Tuesday so I can get the 10% senior discount, even on sale stuff. I have a 25% off coupon at Harbor Freight for a $1900 milling machine. I wonder how many discounted senior dinners I could get for the $475 I would save?

[pdxMIKEpdx]

Here you go!

https://www.menuwithprice.com/menu/sharis-restaurant/

Look for the "Honored Citizens" menu.

[texasdiver]

Originally Posted by Larry Caldwell

Wait...I can get a discounted senior dinner at Sharis? Why did I not know this? Frugal is as frugal does. I shop at Coastal Farm and Ranch on Tuesday so I can get the 10% senior discount, even on sale stuff. I have a 25% off coupon at Harbor Freight for a $1900 milling machine. I wonder how many discounted senior dinners I could get for the $475 I would save?

I rest my case. I went into the one in east Vancouver with my kids a couple months ago. I think we were the only ones there under 65.

[pdxMIKEpdx]

Does Coos Bay even have a Shari's?

There's a hundred long and short term jobs right there from bare lot to operating restaurant!

[xPlorer48]

Originally Posted by Metlakatla

This may help your friend. Vacationers won't be able to live in these:

https://oregoncoast.craigslist.org/a...759124656.html

Thank-you for your concern. She isn’t a friend but is someone we met on a beach. She does have family in Northern California. I did feel bad for her as she had a good seasonal job with the city that was ending soon. She was a very nice person.

[texasdiver]

Originally Posted by pdxMIKEpdx

Does Coos Bay even have a Shari's?

There's a hundred long and short term jobs right there from bare lot to operating restaurant!

Like I said. I actually wasn't being facecious. If the future population growth is going to be driven by retirees then the investment that is going to follow is going to be catering to that market. Places like Shari's and Golden Corral are really more the last generation of retirees who will eventually be aging out. I'm not sure what the existing generation of 50-something soon to be retired cohort is going to be looking for. Probably something different. Maybe the next chain of microbrew pubs will start doing golden oldie promos. Who knows. But that's what people looking to invest in Coos Bay should be thinking about.

Coos Bay isn't going to get the next Amazon HQ or any tech investments at all. Teenagers will mostly still flee the place when they turn 18 as they have done for generations. As others have noted, it isn't well situated for industrial development that requires transportation access because the rail and highway connections are so lacking. Turning Coos Bay into a multi-modal container port, for example, would require billions of new investment into multi-modal rail to get containers out of Coos Bay and that simply isn't going to happen.

I do think we will see a lot of interesting new developments in structural composite wood products, especially for commercial construction. Oregon is well positioned to become a part of that emerging new industry. Unfortunately Coos Bay is not. If I'm going to invest in a $100 million factory to build new large scale composite wood panels and things like 50' long engineered trusses and beams, I'm going to put it someplace with existing rail and highway connections to get those large awkward products to market. That means somewhere along the I-5 corridor frankly. And probably somewhere between Eugene and Portland were the existing Union Pacific rail lines run so that product can be shipped out by rail.

The proposal to punch a natural gas pipeline across SE Oregon to Coos Bay to build a new LNG terminal is interesting but I don't see it ever happening in this day and age with the increasing worldwide focus on reducing fossil fuel consumption. There are a LOT of hurdles that have to be overcome before that ever gets off the ground and there are a lot of other competing proposals around the world that might make more sense.

[PNW-type-gal]

There is a rail road in Southern Oregon, the Central Oregon and Pacific Railroad (amusing as it serves neither Central Oregon nor the cities on the Pacific Ocean) with end terminus in Eugene and Black Butte, just below Weed, CA, that connect with the main Union Pacific-owned lines. I think Roseburg Lumber, the mdf/plywood plant in Central Point (which is a subsidiary of Roseburg now, I think), the Far West Steel plant and whatever that plywood plant between Roseburg and Grants Pass are the main users, along with a couple industrial chemical supply companies.

If conditions are right, I can hear the train blow for a crossing about 2 miles from my house.

The company that owns the line just spent a bundle of money to re-open the southbound stretch between Ashland and Black Butte, CA. During high fire danger, it runs only at night.

[Larry Caldwell]

Originally Posted by texasdiver

The proposal to punch a natural gas pipeline across SE Oregon to Coos Bay to build a new LNG terminal is interesting but I don't see it ever happening in this day and age with the increasing worldwide focus on reducing fossil fuel consumption. There are a LOT of hurdles that have to be overcome before that ever gets off the ground and there are a lot of other competing proposals around the world that might make more sense.

DSL accepted the application yesterday, which started the 60 day comment period.