Jaci Dawn

Our locally owned and operated market is closing this weekend.

Danielson’s Fresh Food Marketplace has been in business for 100 years, 35 of those years in this location. It was a Thriftway for a number of those years, but pulled out of that franchise some time back and went completely independent. Danielson’s has always been an interesting place to shop: there was a full post office in the back where you could pay your utility bills, mail packages, and purchase money orders. The hardware aisle actually had real hardware. The seasonal aisle was always a full aisle, unlike the chain grocery stores.

And the local color shopped at Danielson’s, making it a fun place to go people watch. And you never felt like you had to put on your makeup to go shopping there because of that. (Probably made me one of the local color, too – haha!)

The news that Danielson’s was closing has hit the community pretty hard. Most of us were blind-sided by the announcement. It’s an icon.

It isn’t just the loss of the Danielson’s (we also have a Fred Meyer, an Albertson’s and a Haggen Grocery, and Safeway is moving in to replace Danielson’s): it is the loss of the little post office, the immediate jobs lost for the employees of Danielson’s, the loss of the other stores in the Hilltop Mall and where will our library go?

The folks at Penny’s Hallmark right next door took the opportunity to retire and close their doors completely. Hollywood Video is hanging on, but they will have to close their doors soon, too.

And the library. The library is in temporary housing in the same mall, just a different corner of the building. And it will have to move out ASAP.

I have never been happy with the library in this location. It seems (I could be wrong) that since the library moved here in 1995, that it has been plagued by lack of funding. For years, it was only open four days a week. Every library levy that came up was voted down. Talk of a permanent home for the library has been impeded by voter’s apathy and city hall’s lack of direction. We finally changed how we fund the library and they recently upped their hours to five days a week.

But we’ve been no closer to a permanent home than before.

And now Danielson’s is pulling the rug from under the library.

I wouldn’t be so het up about it except my favorite librarian told me something: city hall and Danielson’s have known about this impending change for some time and they just sat on it until a few weeks ago.

Darn and double darn. So I did what I could for the library and joined the Friends of Oregon City Public Library finally. I should have done that years ago, but I kept forgetting to. Good intentions gone bad.

All these changes. Good, bad or indifferent: it is still the end of an era for Danielson’s, for the look of our dumpy little Hilltop Mall, and it spells a lot of changes for our library. And that is the news from Oregon City.