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 Getaways: Aspiring AstoriaA working town in a beautiful setting starts to get a little luxeBy Steve Millburg  Astoria's economic mainstays are fishing, logging and shipping. RELATEDYOUR E-MAIL ALERTS(Coastal Living Drizzle softens the outlines of the rectangular roofs and blurs the dark hulls of the oceangoing freighters anchored in the river. The town seems frozen somewhere in the middle of the last century. Such a romantic notion. Like most romantic notions, it shatters almost immediately. A glance around Room 501 snaps into focus a chic, energetic vision of 21st-century Astoria -- hanging on to history, but reinterpreting the past with imagination. "A lot of us were raised here and left and said, 'We're never coming back,'" says Teona Dawson, co-owner of T. Paul's Urban Cafe. She laughs and admits, "And now here we are." She returned from Portland to open T. Paul's, a hip but comfortable mix of bistro and coffeehouse. Through the waxing and waning of its economic mainstays -- fishing, logging, and shipping -- Astoria has remained loyal to its own and wary of change. Teona now appreciates some of those same characteristics that once drove her to leave. "We'd like it to be busy here, and booming," she says, "but we don't want it to be a tourist trap. We don't want it to lose its character." "It's not a pretentious town," says Ann Peitsch, proprietor of the Astoria Marine Trading Company gift shop on the riverfront. She glances down at her jeans. "You can go to any place in town dressed like this and be treated well." Everyone gets treated well at the Hotel Elliott. Local developer Chester Trabucco has spent $4 million giving the 1924-vintage landmark a makeover. He created a boutique lodging with such luxurious touches as cedar closets, heated tile floors in the bathrooms, and two-person spa tubs. In Room 501, a softly hissing gas fireplace keeps things cozy. (Even in August, Astoria's high temperature averages only 68 degrees.) Chester hadn't planned to become a hotelier. He was helping to restore the 80-year-old Liberty Theatre across the street and thought the Elliott looked dowdy by comparison. He offered financial incentives to paint the structure. The owner bristled. "He said, 'Nobody is going to tell me when or how to paint my building. However, I would be happy to sell it to you,'" Chester recalls. Activity stirs all around the Elliott. The hotel's restaurant, located across the street and known as The Schooner 12th Street Bistro, serves excellent seafood. The pleasantly cluttered Lucy's Books invites leisurely browsing. Two big galleries, RiverSea and Valley Bronze, draw art lovers. Finn Ware celebrates Astoria's Northern European heritage. In a town that averages 190 rainy days a year, Let It Rain supplies brightly colored ways of staying dry. An imposing building, once a bank, lives on as Columbia River Day Spa. Visitors can now invest in themselves with a sauna session in the former vault, a massage, or a facial. Massage therapist Tisha Jensen, a Southern California native, says she's jazzed about Astoria, adding with a laugh, "because I'm not from here. I moved here and 'discovered' it." Lewis and Clark made a similar claim 200 years ago. After achieving their long-sought goal, the Pacific Ocean, the explorers wintered at what became Fort Clatsop, near Astoria. Like Teona Dawson of T. Paul's, they'd undoubtedly love coming back. Copyright 2005 COASTAL LIVING Magazine. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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) -- As seen from the windows of Room 501 at the Hotel Elliott, the historic district of Astoria, Oregon, appears downright self-effacing. The low, flat buildings modestly duck into the hillside so as not to obscure the panorama of the Columbia River and the distant Pacific Ocean.
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