City to hear road name ideas

Stonehedge Gardens will be fronted by the new road, requiring the restaurant/wedding venue to change its street name but not its address number.

The business currently has a Cascade Avenue address because its driveway is fronted by Cascade Avenue, but with the addition of the new road, it will be fronted by a different street.

That means Stonehedge will not be able to keep its Cascade Avenue address.

Francis said it does not make sense to change the new section of road to be Country Club Road, due to the fact that the city and county road addressing grids do not line up.

Were Stonehedge to keep its current 3405 address and be on Country Club, a few blocks away would sit the Timber Crest Condominiums at 105 Country Club. If you were to travel south to the other end of Country Club you would hit Hood River Golf Course at 1850 Country Club.

“It just has to be a different name than Country Club Road because if you do that you set off a lot of confusion,” Francis said.

Caldwell also took issue with Francis’ proposed name for the Road, Coe Avenue, which he said would drive tourism traffic away from his business and would lead to confusion between the and the Coe Building, which houses the Hood River County School District Administrative Offices and is located on Eugene St.

Francis said he proposed the name to honor the Coe family, early settlers in Hood River.

“We were never told about a name change as unappetizing and un-tourist-inspiring as Coe Avenue. No offense, Nathaniel,” Caldwell wrote to the News, referencing the Coe family patriarch. “But in this GPS era, we need all the help we can get attracting guests to our businesses.”

The city council will be holding a public hearing on the name change at its 6 p.m. Monday meeting at Hood River City Hall. Francis said he ultimately does not care what the name of the road is, just as long as its not Country Club.

“I don’t care if its Coe Ave. or Prime Rib Place,” Francis said.

He added that he had also received calls from concerned winery owners on Country Club that closing off the intersection of Cascade and Country Club would make it more difficult for tourists to reach the wineries.

Francis said he had proposed a “slip lane” at the intersection to ODOT which would allow only cars traveling over the off ramp for exit 62 to turn right onto Country Club, but that ODOT had turned down the idea.

“If we were to do that we would not get our three million dollars from them for this project,” he said.

The current plan would require cars coming I-84 to travel down Cascade to Mt. Adams Avenue, turn at a new stop light at the intersection, turn right from Mt. Adams onto the unnamed new road and then turn left onto Country Club.

n

Have an idea for the name of the new road? The Hood River City Council will hear suggestions during its meeting at 6 p.m. Monday at City Hall before making a final decision.

The guidelines for the road name include no profanity, no puns and no punctuation marks in the name.