Friday, February 7, 2025 | Vol. 49, Issue 2
www.cannonbeachgazette.com
Community pillar, ex-Mayor Steidel passes New council WILL CHAPPELL
weighs elementary school options
Gazette Editor
Former Cannon Beach Mayor and longtime community leader Sam Steidel passed away at the age of 66 on January 12, 2025. Steidel spent most of his life in Cannon Beach, running Steidel Arts, formerly the Staircase Gallery, in partnership with his parents, Sally and Bill, and serving in city government for more than three decades, culminating with two terms as mayor from 2015 to 2023. “If you want to know how much Sam loved Cannon Beach, you just have to take a look at the parades we had over the years, the Sandcastle Contest, the plays,” said Steidel’s lifelong friend Peter Dueber, “the things that Cannon Beach stood for for the locals.” Steidel was born to Bill and Sally Steidel in Oregon City in 1958 and moved to Cannon Beach in 1962, at the age of four. Sam’s father was an artist who opened the Staircase Gallery on Hemlock Street, now Steidel Art, and painted fantasy artwork. After moving to town, Steidel quickly became fast friends with Dueber and his eight siblings, spending his free time playing with his Cannon Beach Elementary schoolmates and sometimes spending nights in the treehouse in their back yard. “Sam and I were just brothers, and my sisters and brothers would say the same thing,” Dueber said. “Sam was just a part of our family when he walked through the door.” After graduating from
WILL CHAPPELL Gazette Editor
Sam Steidel
Seaside High School, Steidel went to Mount Hood Community College, Oregon State University and the University of Idaho, studying set design and theatrical production as well as architecture. After graduating, Sam returned to Cannon Beach and began working at his family’s art gallery, where he mounted and framed his father’s artwork. Dueber said that this gave the gallery a leg up over others in town, as patrons could purchase a piece and take it home on the same day, ready to hang.
background in theatrical production and set design, Steidel became a fixture at the Coaster Theatre, helping to stage productions and sometimes taking on roles himself. Steidel was also a crucial supporter of the Cannon Beach Sandcastle Contest, showing up at 4:30 or 5 a.m. on the day of the contest to mark competitors’ plots on the beach and helping with logistics in the contest’s early years. Steidel began his career volunteering in city government in the early 1990s, serving on the design review board and planning
Steidel’s matting skills were honed learning to complement his father’s colorful fantasy work and he expanded to creating pieces of art using the medium, layering different matting materials together to make figures and other designs. “Whatever he decided to do, he could do with matting, and I’ve never seen anybody do that before,” Dueber said. In addition to his work at his parents’ gallery, Steidel also threw himself wholeheartedly into the community he loved. Making use of his
commission, before being elected to the city council, where he served seven years, and winning election as mayor in 2014, and reelection in 2018. Throughout his time volunteering with city leadership, Steidel became known for as a living memory of the city’s history and champion of the aspects of the community that he felt best exemplified its character. Former City Councilor Robin Risley, who served
With new members sworn in, Cannon Beach City Council began discussions on the future of the Cannon Beach Elementary School property at their regular January meeting and continued them at their retreat. City Attorney Ashley Driscoll briefed councilors on the legal situation following the failed advisory vote on the project last November at the regular meeting, before councilors discussed the project’s future, with no clear consensus emerging on the path forward and councilors voicing a desire for more public input. At the regular meeting, Driscoll told councilors that the settlement agreement with a group of citizens who had sued the city over the proposed elementary school plan and settled on the condition that the city hold an advisory vote on the project was the decisive document going forward. In the settlement agreement and resulting advisory vote, the project was specifically defined as the $13-million tourist facility that had been approved by council. Driscoll said that this
See STEIDEL, Page A3
See SCHOOL, Page A2
Winter Waters Festival returns Council sets promoting seaweed consumption agenda at
retreat
PIERCE BAUGH V for the Gazette
“It started as a way to get seaweed onto people’s plates,” said Alanna Kieffer of Winter Waters, the month-long event to promote the suitable use of seaweed, shellfish and Oreogn fin fish, which she co-founded with fellow seaweed advocate Rachelle Hacmac and Oregon Coast food systems value-chain coordinator Kristen Penner. In February, Winter Waters partners with restaurants, artists and educators to design and develop seaweed-centric events. Winter Waters takes place on the coast, as well as in Portland, Beaverton and Eugene, with events in Cannon Beach from February 6-9. During this weekend there will be a ‘Seafood Trivia’ night at Pelican Brewing from 6-7:30 p.m. on Thursday; Saturday, February 8, there will be a seaweed cyanotype art class at the Cannon Beach Chamber of Commerce at 11:00 a.m. and a screening of the documentary “Hope in the Water,” also at the Chamber of Commerce at 5:00 p.m.; Sunday, February 9, there will be another seaweed cyanotype art class offered at the Chamber of Commerce at
WILL CHAPPELL Gazette Editor
11:00 a.m., and at 7:00 p.m., there will be a temaki workshop at Basalt. Participating local restaurants and stores will also be incorporating seaweed into some of their food this Winter Waters weekend, including Bruce’s Candy Kitchen, Sea Level Bakery + Coffee, MacGregors Whiskey Bay and Wayfarer. Winter Waters partners with Port Orford-based non-profit Oregon Kelp Alliance, an organization dedicated to restoring
native kelp forests. A percentage of sales from Winter Waters events and specialty menu items go to support OKA. Kieffer had long had an interest in seaweed and its uses. She studied marine biology at Oregon State University and has worked in marine science education for ten years. In 2021, she started working as a sales manager, brand developer and farmer at Oregon Seaweed, a company that grows Pacific Dulse, a
type of seaweed that is high in protein with a taste that Kieffer describes as being akin to salty kale. Oregon Seaweed has farms —their farms being above-ground tanks — in Bandon and Garibaldi. Farming seaweed is perhaps an unconventional career choice, but it’s one Kieffer is passionate about. “It opened my eyes to complications See WINTER WATERS, Page A5
Cannon Beach’s city council discussed policy priorities and were briefed on ongoing projects at a two-day retreat on January 9 and 10. In addition to a lengthy discussion of the elementary school rejuvenation project (see separate article) the council touched on construction plans for a new city hall, a possible cap on short-term rentals and priorities for transient room tax dollars. City Manager Bruce St. Denis gave an update on the city hall and police station projects, which will see new facilities built on Gower Street and at the Southwind property on Highway 101, south of town, respectively. St. Denis said that city staff is hoping to move to two temporary office units set up at the end of Second Street sometime in March to allow dem-
olition to begin on the current city hall. During construction, some city staff will work at the public works yard and some remotely, as the two temporary office units will not have enough room for everybody. Bids for the project are out to subcontractors, according to St. Denis, and a guaranteed maximum price for both projects is expected at a February meeting. St. Denis said that the crews will work on one site before moving to the other to increase efficiency and that with less demolition work to be done, it is likely construction work will begin on the new police station before city hall. During construction, city meetings will take place at the Cannon Beach Chamber of Commerce, which has been See RETREAT, Page A3
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