Oregon Public Broadcasting

The national recession has towns across the Northwest strategizing about their long-term prospects. One of them is tiny berg of Dayton, nestled into the Blue Mountains in Eastern Washington.

A few years ago Dayton lost its largest employer, a vegetable processing plant owned by the company known for creating the Jolly Green Giant. Those jobs moved to Peru.

Now the city is pinning its hopes on a new eco-food processing park. Richland correspondent Anna King reports.

Jennie Dickinson and Gary White stand in front of Dayton’s historic train station. It’s the inspiration for the brand Blue Mountain Station.

A hundred years ago Dayton was one of the biggest towns in Washington. Now it’s a sleepy hamlet that most people just pass on by.

Jennie Dickinson: "Right now we are traveling east on Highway 12, it used to be the Nez Perce Trail and it is now Dayton’s main street."

Jennie Dickinson takes me on a driving tour of Dayton. It’s her home town – population 2800.

She runs the Port of Columbia. Dickinson has been working hard on a plan that would bring pasta makers, wheat mills and artisan cheese makers to this corner of Washington.

The Port plans to create a sustainable industrial park for small-scale food processors. She claims it would be the first of its kind.

Jennie Dickinson: "In five years I would guess we would have at least four or five small food processors in LEED certified buildings producing products. We would have test gardens, we will be recycling and reusing products onsite as best as we can."

The port would also provide a marketing umbrella to startups that wanted it. It would be called Blue Mountain Station.

Dickinson says the port has spent more than $100,000 developing the plan. A lot is riding on Blue Mountain Station working. The small city has wheat farms and wind power, but not much else.

Dickinson has a son in his first year of college. She says Dayton’s future depends on young people like him coming back home.

Jennie Dickinson: "I understand the desire to get out of you home community and see the world. But what I want is for them to have the opportunity to come back. To stay if they want, but definitely to come back."

But luring artisan food entrepreneurs to a small town in Eastern Washington is a hard task.

Gary White: "First of all they are probably not going to have a clue where Dayton, Washington is."

That’s Gary White, a marketing consultant who’s helping the port. He thinks Blue Mountain Station might be just the thing to attract companies from places like California.

Gary White: "And they say you know we’ve reached a point in our business because of maybe taxation down there, maybe it’s a high crime rate, maybe its traffic, pollution. Whatever it might be. They say we would like to transfer our business somewhere else. Where our cost of business is lower, where maybe the community is a little more business friendly, where the quality of life is amazing. And this is an amazing community for quality of life."

But quality of life aside, can a project like this get off the ground in a flagging economy? Credit for new businesses is tight and investors are jittery.

Both White and Dickinson say their research shows organic and natural products still have demand even in a down economy. But Dickinson says there is no plan B to reverse her hometown’s economic decline.

Gary White: "We still rate in usually the top three to four counties with the highest unemployment rate. We still struggle. So people do need hope especially in this scary economic time."

Right now the Port of Columbia is working on buying the property for Blue Mountain Station. Then it will start recruiting businesses within a few months.

Online:

Blue Mountain Station