News roundup: a second ped/bike bridge comes to PDX; Coos Bay grows entrepreneurs


Entrepreneurs flourish on the South Coast, while the Pearl District in Portland will see a new bike/pedestrian bridge.

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Oregon News

—— Entrepeneurs are everywhere.  A couple of months ago, we reported on the entrepreneurial wave splashing ashore in Newport and Lincoln City.  Now the South Coast is getting its moment in the startup sun. The Eugene Register-Guard reports on the new wave of young business owners.

—— Laika’s latest, Kubo and the Two Strings, inspires the Oregonian to run a retrospective on the the state’s successful animation industry dating to 1976, the year Will Vinton opened his animation studio.  Read more here.

—— Cyclists and pedestrians will get a dedicated bridge across I-405 in Portland’s Pearl District. The Oregon Transportation Commission announced Friday it will provide $2.8 million of funding for a $5.9 million pedestrian and bike bridge. The structure will be located at Northwest Flanders Street between Northwest 15th and 16th avenues. The Portland Business Journal has the story.

—— Beaverton will hold a job fair for laid off tech workers August 24th. The event is the second of its kind hosted by the state employment agency and the evocatively named Intel Eliminati, a group formed by laid off Intel workers.  Companies attending the job fair include big Washington County employers – Salesforce, SolarWorld, Laika and Qorvo among them – along with downtown tech businesses Tripwire, Puppet, Jama Software and Smarsh.  Read more at Portland Tech Jobs. 

—  The Oregonian’s exhaustive report on the Canyon Creek fire is fueling new interest in sustainable forest management practices. But a growing number of readers and forest fire experts are also pointing to an odd disconnect and logical flaw in the the O’s reporting: between the article’s coverge of supposed missteps on the part of firefighters and the big picture thesis about the a severely underfunded Forest Service and importance of restoration work in the tinder boxes that comprise the state’s forests. Read the critique here.

— — Fueled by the tech boom, stock indexes are clocking in highest gains in 15 years. Read more by OB markets blogger, Jason Norris.

National news

—— The fashion industry in African cities in flourishing. The boom is linked to a growing upper middle class in large metropolitan areas.  Read more at the New York Times.

—— The Olympics closed yesterday amid a torrential rainstorm. CNN captures the ceremony in pictures.