By CHERYL ROMANO/YachatsNews.com As she surveys her bustling restaurant on a pre-Thanksgiving Friday, Rosetta Dimiceli is grateful that her staff is about to get some time off. “The summer was so crazy. We were so busy, we could hardly handle it,” says the owner of the Salty Dawg Bar & Grill in Waldport and […]
Drift Inn
More Yachats-area restaurants close over the weekend as business plummets and to keep staff, public safe
By QUINTON SMITH and CHERYL ROMANO/YachatsNews.com Two more Yachats restaurants closed this weekend as business slumped from statewide dining restrictions, fewer Spring Break visitors and to protect staff and customers from possibly spreading the coronavirus. Ona Restaurant owner Michelle Korgan closed her business at 4 p.m. Saturday. Yachats Brewing + Farmstore announced on Facebook […]
Coronavirus wipes out Spring Break on the Oregon coast, devastating businesses and threatening workers
By DANA TIMS/YachatsNews.com Shuttered restaurants. Closed gift shops and visitors’ centers. Hotel, motel and other lodging reservations cancelled by the hundreds, all over fears of a coronavirus pandemic. Welcome to spring break 2020 on the Oregon coast. Most years, spring break is the time when tourism-related businesses begin ramping up for the summer high season. […]
In granting Drift Inn variance, Yachats commission laments lack of overall parking plan for downtown
By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com The Yachats Planning Commission approved a request Tuesday by the owner of the popular Drift Inn restaurant and hotel to allow it to have eight less parking spaces than required, but not before wrestling with lots of questions it hopes the city will soon tackle. Such as: When will the city […]
Planning Commission and Drift Inn owner continue back-and-forth over parking issues
By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com The Yachats Planning Commission is giving the owner of a popular downtown restaurant and hotel complex two months to come up with detailed drawings to determine if there is enough off-street parking to comply with city regulations. The parking issue dates back almost two years when Drift Inn owner Linda Hetzler […]
Three building projects show progress in downtown Yachats
By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com Frank Male and Linda Hetzler are spending about $400,000 each to transform two eyesores in downtown Yachats. Male bought a vacant, decaying former wine shop and two cabins at the intersection of U.S. Highway 101 and West Fourth Street. When remodeling is finished this spring he plans to move his guitar shop […]
Proposed lodging tax increase draws no support Wednesday night
By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com As expected, the major motel managers in Yachats told the City Council Wednesday night that their idea to raise the city’s lodging tax by 11 percent was the wrong way to support tourism and prop up the city budget. Instead, they asked for a better long-term plan for using tourism taxes, to […]