The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

DAYTON - When it comes to envisioning a more attractive, more prosperous downtown Dayton, the ideas flowfrom far and wide.

Focus on the Green Giant and the history of the can­nery, some say. Develop along the Touchet River, our most valuable as­set, say others.

Concentrate on children - have an All Children's Week­end, they continue.

But members of the Day­ton Development Task Force, which has been around for over 25 years, say the town already has a theme - "His­toric Downtown Dayton." Now it's time for marketing. "If the whole town wants to go in another direction, that needs serious discus­sion,"

said Jennie Dickinson, with the Port of Columbia. "Serious investments have been made already into high­lighting the history of the town." Bette Lou Crothers, who owns the local State Farm of­fice, agreed. "We've already decided on a theme. We de­cided to be what we are. I just don't know what we're doing to promote it."

Ken Graham, who owns Blue Mountain News in downtown Dayton, recently surveyed a group of about 30 interested folks, includ­ing members of the task force, to get a feel for what they thought was the most important issues to tackle downtown. Promoting the downtown and work already done to make it more attractive was of highest priority, Graham said.

Graham heads a subcom­mittee of the Dayton Devel­opment Task Force which is focused on revitalizing the downtown. This group met Monday evening at the Day­ton Memorial Library to dis­cuss the results of Graham's survey and make plans for going forward. The result was some pretty creative ideas for marketing the town and pulling together a cohesive vision for future project planning. The task force has been working on various projects on the west end of town, near the Columbia County Transportation building, but Rich Hendrickson, county planner, asked the group to consider mapping out a lon­ger, broader range plan. That's just what Anne Walsh, senior project manag­er

with Puget Sound Energy, and Marcene Henrickson, with the task force, suggested the committee do next.

"Step one, we should get all the ideas and plans out there already together and maybe do a drawing on a map of the city so we can see the overall vision," Walsh said. "Then maybe, for step two, we could bring in Rich and see what he thinks. Do we like this? What's miss­ing? And so on." The group was excited about the idea. "I think Rich would like to take a clean sheet of pa­per and reinvent Dayton," said Dayton City Councilor Merle Jackson. "But Day­ton's

already here. If we can embrace all these parts of the puzzle, we've got the energy to get things done. We could reaffirm what the bigger puzzle looks like."

The Dayton Develop­ment Task Force has been behind such projects in town as the renovation of the Lib­erty

Theater, the depot, the downtown tree planting and more. Other projects in the development stage include a downtown playground for children and a town square, Graham said.