Cynthia Traner, owner of Her Shabby Shed, shows the different transformations her shop has gone through Thursday, March 23, 2023, as she prepares to close the Hermiston business.

HERMISTON — Cynthia Traner of Hermiston plans to open a sales lot for tiny houses on wheels at 425 S. Main St., Stanfield.

“Mobile tiny houses are ideal for many uses,” she said. “Retail businesses, hair salon, leather shop, florist, bridal boutique, jewelry, home decor, wood sign maker, etc. could travel to events. They also could be for coffee or food use, as well.”

She was packing up wares Thursday, March 23, from Her Shabby Shed at 319 W. Locust Ave., Hermiston. Her shop sold antiques, art, home decor, furniture, vintage linens and clothing.

Traner’s new tenant on West Locust Avenue is Alejandra Gutierrez, of Homemade Bakery. Her future cake and pastry shop is near the food pods on Southwest Third Street.

Fighting city hall

Traner said she considered a lot on West Locust Avenue and Southwest First Street in Hermiston, near her business, but the city planning department secretary raised parking issues there.

“But their main reason was no (recreational vehicle), (all-terrain vehicle), boats, autos, etc., type of new business within city limits,” she said. “The city said the Ford dealership was a lot of (Highway) 395 land used just to park cars. Mobile tiny houses are classified as RVs.”

A misunderstanding might have arisen over zoning. The few blocks around West Locust Avenue close to Highway 395 are zoned C-1, central commercial, rather than C-2, outlying commercial.

“In the C-2 zone, auto sales, service and repair are outright uses, including RVs,” Hermiston Planning Director Clinton Spence said.

While Traner is happy with her tiny house sales lot in Stanfield, she still harbors complaints against Hermiston’s administration.

“They are backpedaling now, as I asked a lot of questions about that lot and made my intentions clear, and they said no new RV business in city limits,” she said.

Traner’s premises on West Locust Avenue are zoned C-2, she said, which from her understanding allows two buildings on one lot, while C-1 permits only one structure per lot.

“I made it clear there would be no office building, no utilities hook-ups needed,” she said. “Just back in and park three or four of them.”

Traner previously owned C and R Mercantile in the Quonset hut at 165 S.W. Third St., cater-cornered from the premises she is vacating.

“If I was in my Quonset hut building with my business, I would have plenty of room to park 22 to 30-foot tiny homes on the lot as retail products, (but) they would not have approved, as that is C-1,” she said.

The Quonset hut building was once used as U-Haul rentals, Traner said.

“I was there from 2010 to 2020, when the governor shut me down as nonessential,” she said. “I reopened (in the Locust Avenue building) as Her Shabby Shed LLC from December 2020 to current. I purchased the building in 2017. Just the same as they said I couldn’t use that building to have a mobile food vendor, as it was too close to food pods and the other restaurant business across from Bi-Mart.”

Traner rented out the West Locust Avenue structures before moving her own business into them.

“Veg Out started in that building for a year,” Traner said. “Then Bob Hale, owner of the Grainary Square building on Hermiston Avenue, rented my building for two and a half years to use as an office, while his was undergoing renovations.”

Plans for mobile tiny homes

Traner said she plans to sell completed, timber-framed, wheeled tiny homes from Tumbleweed Tiny House Company of Sonoma, California, and lightweight steel kits from Volstrukt Agile Framing Systems of Austin, Texas.

“My vision and hope is that I could somehow get the ball rolling to start another program, like the Hermiston High School has, where they build an entire house a year,” she said. “Maybe have tiny houses finished for model businesses done by high school kids.”