The work currently going on at Hermiston Plaza to renovate parking and landscaping builds on a project proposed 40 years ago.

The Sept. 25, 1975 edition of the Hermiston Herald held a front page story titled “New Shopping Plaza Eyed” after Eugene developer Earl Green appeared before the Hermiston City Council to ask that 14 acres at the junction of Highland Avenue and Highway 395 be annexed into the city and zoned for commercial use.

He also said he would be willing to pay to add a traffic signal and left turn lanes at the intersection.

His plan was to build a $4 million shopping center anchored by three major tenants and hosting up to an additional 30 businesses.

From the article:

“Green said he couldn’t reveal the names of the major tenants at this time but would do so at the next regularly scheduled meeting of the Hermiston Planning Commission.

… Green, who is a civil engineer, said preliminary plans call for 140,000 square feet of buildings. The three major tenants would occupy 35,000, 32,000 and 15,000 square feet respectively. There would be parking for about 600-650 vehicles and ‘lots of landscaping.’

The developer told the Hermiston Herald he wanted to break ground in December. Two of the major stores have set deadlines to open by September, 1976.

Green said this was no ‘flash in the pan’ proposal. He said he has spent thousands of dollars already and that he has no intention of walking away from it. He said he has been working on the proposal for the last 15 months.

A total of 13 separate properties are involved in the proposal including highway right-of-way recently purchased from the state. The right-of-way was to have been used for a new highway.

… Green said the center was somewhere between a regional shopping center and a community shopping center. He pointed out that the center would ‘enhance’ and ‘benefit’ downtown businesses.

‘The one thing I don’t want to do is kill the downtown core area,’ he said.”

Three weeks later the Herald ran a second story announcing “Major Tenants Named at Plaza Center.” Green told the Hermiston planning commission that Safeway (already located at what is today the Hermiston Conference Center building), Pay Less Drug and the Oregon-based dime store chain Sprouse-Reitz had all agreed to anchor the plaza.

The stores did open at the newly built plaza, but not until June 1978 — two years after Green had said they would.

The world’s first Shari’s restaurant also opened in 1978 at the Hermiston Plaza, but the Herald did not include the restaurant in its articles about the plaza that year.

Today Safeway still anchors the 150,000 square foot plaza, but Pay Less Drug and Sprouse-Reitz have been replaced by Big Lots, Bealls, the Dollar Tree and about 13 other businesses.