What time is it, over in Orchards?
When a Columbian reporter swung by on a recent lunch hour, the impressive wrought-iron quadruple-faced timepiece at the very visible corner of Fourth Plain and Covington roads said: 11:56, 12:04, 7:38 and 11:55.
The actual time was 12:40 p.m.
“My question is, why can we not keep the clock at the right time?” a reader named Tony wrote to ask us. “Also, why do we not use the square to promote community actions? How about some entertainment? How about anything? This seems like a lot of money went to, well, nothing?”
Here’s a quick answer to the easier question — about the profusion of time zones at the spot known as Orchards Plaza.
“The clock has some major flaws that prevent it from being maintained either in the traditional fashion or remotely,” Vancouver public works spokeswoman Loretta Callahan said in an e-mail. “Due to the way it was designed and built, resetting or correcting the clock takes a series of service visits by a licensed maintenance electrician. The city is looking at whether this can be corrected, or whether it should no longer be maintained due to budget and staffing constraints.”
Which leads us to Tony’s broader question about expense. Most of Orchards Plaza’s homey trimmings were donated by local businesses and residents. The community square cost a lot to build only if you include the cost of the overall roadway realignment that spurred its existence.
That $8.5 million project took years of planning and construction before it was done in the summer of 2002. At that time, the property was outside the Vancouver city limits, in unincorporated Clark County. The upgrade brought curbs, left-turn lanes, concrete-block retaining walls, traffic signals, sidewalks, new lighting, bike lanes and more to a rural crossroads that was overwhelmed by the growing onrush of modern urban traffic.
As part of that modernization plan, Clark County bought up some local real estate and demolished a little Flower Express shop — leaving a sliver of unoccupied real estate.
“It was not large enough to do anything with. We agreed it would make a great community plaza,” county public works director Pete Capell said at the time. “It’s really a community feature and meeting place — just someplace that can create more of an Orchards presence.”
So the brick plaza got built, with its clock, benches and mural. Clark County contributed $82,000 for textured asphalt that mimics paving stones and planters — and for the mural, which was just a small slice of that figure. The benches and clock were all donated.
Diana Shaw, onetime leader of the defunct Evergreen Business Association, recalled working with Capell, Bunch Construction and dozens of volunteer groups to get it all done.
“We had Pete up on a ladder, we had schoolchildren, and then we had a neighborhood celebration to dedicate it,” Shaw said. “The following year, there was a Christmas celebration and a huge tree was put up. That was our dream.”
But inertia set in at the Evergreen Business Association, and Shaw gave up trying to keep it alive. “Nobody wanted to step forward and keep those Christmas celebrations going anymore,” she said. Hence the lack of events or programming that Tony complained about.
“It’s still nicer than it would have been if it was just an empty, weedy spot,” Shaw said.
All wet
The mural depicts Orchards life in the 1920s: the historic Orchards Feed Mill — which still sells chicken feed and chicken manure just up the street — and a trolley, horses and carriages.
What it doesn’t depict is what Garry Brown has too good a view of: water damage.
Brown is a commercial photographer whose studio and base of operations is on the other side of the wall at 5905 N.E. 109th Ave. (a former fire station). The mural was painted on a communal-property wall, he said, with the (now demolished) florist on one side and his building on the other. The florist side became Clark County’s property — and Brown was consulted about the mural before it went up.
“We said great, go ahead and do it. I liked the idea, and I made sure to ask who’s going to take care of it,” Brown recalled. “(Clark County) said, we own this side now, we’ll take care of it, no problem.”
Here’s the problem: Upon annexation in 2007, the wall became the property of the city of Vancouver. Meanwhile, Brown said, his side of the wall started oozing winter rainwater.
“The wall leaks,” he said. “It’s damaged some of my photo equipment.”
Humidity is hard on his studio backgrounds and green screen, he said. And standing water is hard on his subjects. It really puts a damper on things, so to speak, when a family or youth sports team posing in his studio winds up standing in a half-inch of water.
“It has pretty much caused us not to pursue as much studio work as we used to,” and to go after itinerant photo assignments instead, Brown said. The problem has grown worse every year, he said. But he’s never worked up the gumption to call a lawyer. The one call he ever made to the city brought out a grounds maintenance crew, he said, who weren’t qualified to tackle the problem.
“They did stuff like cutting the shrubs,” he said.
When The Columbian took Brown’s complaint to Callahan, she noted the complexity of the situation and recommended Brown talk to the city’s Facilities, Risk and Property Management office.
“The situation … seems to contain many different elements that would have to be checked out,” she said in an e-mail. “I’m sure Risk would be happy to check it out and work directly with him.”
Brown said he’s never done that — he’s pretty busy keeping his business alive.
“This has been such a convoluted thing, I’m not sure what to do about it,” Brown said. “To me the mural is a valuable part of the community. But it’s a problem.”
Scott Hewitt: 360-735-4525 or scott.hewitt@columbian.com.
